Basque ethnography at a glance

Intangible cultural heritage is in vogue. With this clear statement, we seek to reflect on the evolution that this heritage area has undergone since UNESCO produced the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2003. It was ratified by Spain in 2005 and subsequently embodied in tools such as the Spanish National Plan for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage (2011), the Safeguarding the Cultural Heritage Act 10/2015, of 26 May, and the different reforms implemented to include the term and their application in regional legislation.

In recent years, its development has led to the emergence of debates mainly focused on the different management models for the heritage status processes, its consideration in relation to other tangible heritage areas, and the role played by the carrier community, with the latter taken to be the set of key players of the different intangible practices classified according to the areas established by the 2003 Convention.

It is a heritage directly linked to people, where the tangible part is the basis for the development of knowledge and skills – sometimes with a deeply rooted tradition -, whose greatest and most pressing risk is the vulnerability to which they are subject. Festivities, rituals, recipes, crafts, product processing, knowledge of nature, oral tradition, languages, and a whole series of practices based on customary and traditional codes to the vast extent, are the main management objective of the administration and with the direct involvement, although not in all cases, of the carrier communities.

The epitome of those international declaration processes is the latest project that has ended with manual bell ringing being added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. That has meant the inclusion of some ringing techniques still to be found in the Basque Country and Navarra, safeguarded by groups of bell-ringers such as “Juane” Arientzako kanpaijole eskola elkartea in Guipúzcoa or the Bandeadores de Artajona [Artajona Bell-ringers] and the Campaneros de la Catedral de Pamplona [Pamplona Cathedral Bell-ringers] in Navarra, to name a few.

Manual bell ringing is a sound language used by communities throughout Europe for centuries. Its main purpose as a means of communication down through the centuries has fulfilled a number of social functions for the community, from information-sharing, to coordination, cohesion of the territory and protection. The ringing has traditionally helped to structure community life, mark out time and work, daily routines, festivities and mourning. Those elements converge to create a broad repertoire and great diversity of forms and techniques in religious and civic life to announce fires, storms, prayers, times and events of the life cycle. Bell ringing is also central to many aspects of everyday and work routines, rituals and celebrations.

And once at the point where the declaration comes into force, it is time to consider the following questions: Are the declarations regarding this type of heritage useful? Do they consider and address the real safeguarding needs of those manifestations? In that regard, a positive point is how those processes highlight the manifestation and showcase it to today’s society and among other communities where its shared practice ceased to be so decades ago. Something needs to be known to be appreciated.

The other reality of this situation is in the hands of the Administration and its ability to manage this type of heritage. Public institutions’ interest in heritage is often more related to economic and promotional aspects of this type of manifestations, than with the specific realities of areas such as crafts or certain practices that are being stifled by globalisation and the terrible population drain in the countryside. Manual bell ringing is one such case.

Should those of us entrusted with managing heritage work to foster the heritage status processes in the weakest areas of intangible assets? Of course. The safeguarding methodologies used must be adapted to the specific needs of that heritage and its carrier communities. Declaring intangible manifestations is pointless if it does not go hand in hand with such important aspects as the conveyance and the very lifespan of those practices from a realistic and global perspective.

Julio César Valle Perulero – Consultancy Area

LABRIT ONDAREA-LABRIT PATRIMONIO