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Sunday, March 13, 1994 - New York, Newsday  (page 34)

LETTER FROM EUSKADI by Mark Kurlansky

For the Basques, Madrid Is As Remote as the Franco Era
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   As the three-car milk train out of Vitoria, the Basque capital,
made its way into the province of Guipuzcoa, it curved between the
steep velvet-green pastures, past the sheep perched at impossible
angles, the little pine forests and the jagged rocky snow-lined
crests of the Sierra Elgueas.
   The scenery in the mountains of Guipuzcoa has always thrilled me.
But what moved me was the music that was piped into the cars.  It
was not very original music, except for being sung in the Basque
language, Euskera.
   The songs on the train were student protest ballads about
Basqueness, Basque tradition, Basque resistance.  Before the 1975
death of Gen. Francisco Franco, Basques did not dare speak their
language in public.  I would see a group of people talking, and
they would fall silent as I walked over.  You didn't speak the
secret language if you didn't know who was listening.  Students
would whistle these tunes when passing Spanish soldiers.  Now it
is just piped into the train as a golden oldie.  The Basques, to
a large degree, have won.
   Post-Franco Spain is a kind of constitutional federation of
autonomous regions under Spanish sovereignty.  Different regions
have negotiated different arrangements.  The Basques wanted as
much autonomy as they could get.  They have their own government,
which was placed in Vitoria because it was the one Basque city that
lacked a major activity.  Now the once dark and somber city has
pedestrian thoroughfares and newly cleaned cream-colored rococo
facades.  And there is a Basque police force which wears red berets.
Large floppy wool berets are the national symbol and excellent
protection in the moist climate.
   It seems unlikely that the people of a modern industrial society
would still wear their funny hats and speak they funny language.  But
they fought hard to keep these things, for the right to be Basque.
   Entering the Basque provinces on the two-lane bridges that cross the
Ebro in the brown and rich Rioja wine region, you are always greeted
with a sign from the Basque government stating that you are now
entering Euskadi.
   Euskadi, the Euskera name for the traditional Basque homeland is
composed of four Spanish and three French regions.  While the Basque
provinces are among the poorest parts of France, the Basque provinces
of Spain - Navarra, Guipuzcoa, Vizcaya and Alava - have long been
among that country's richest.  The capital of Guipuzcoa, San Sebastian,
is an elegant resort town with a crescent of beach in front of stately
Belle Epoque architecture.  The Vizcayan capital of Bilbao is a center
of banking and industry.
   The coastline of Guipuzcoa is home to one of the world's legendary
fishing fleets.  Basque fisherman were thought to have worked the cod
banks of Newfoundland and New England centuries before the arrival of
Columbus in the New World.  Salt and cod is still one of the great
Basque dishes, and there are stores in San Sebastian and Bilbao that
sell nothing else.  In Spain, a nation in love with eating, the
Basques are considered the best cooks.
   The origin of the Basques, a ruddy-skinned, dark-haired people, is
a mystery.  According to one theory, they were the original Iberians,
driven by invaders to this mountainous corner and forgotten.  Or they
may actually be indigenous to this area between the Pyrenees and the
Cantabrian Sierras.  Their language, Euskera, is a linguistic orphan,
one of only four European languages that is not in the Indo-European
family.
   One of the striking changes in the Spanish Basque provinces is the
growth of Euskera.  At first glance, it seems to be merely a political
cause of the regional government.  Signs now label San Sebastian as
Donostia and Vitoria as Gasteiz.  And many road signs are in Euskera.
Yes, the beret-topped men who play cards in the village cafes in the
mountains of Guipuzcoa speak Euskera.  But what about educated, affluent
Basques?
   For five years now there has been a newspaper in Euskera.  And there
is a network of small-town dailies.  Although the first book in Euskera,
a slim volume of poetry, was published in 1545, it has been largely an
oral language.  And yet there are 965 titles scheduled for publication
in Euskera in 1994, about a third of which are by Basque writers.  Books
in Euskera enjoy phenomenal sales for a language with only about
800,000 speakers.
   Bernardo Atxaga is the most internationally recognized writer in the
Euskera language.  He was born in 1951 in the village of Asteasu.  He
grew up speaking Euskera at home with his carpenter father and school-
teacher mother.
   When Atxaga was growing up, newspapers and books were only in Spanish.
All teachers were pro-Franco, and Basques were punished for speaking their
own language.
  In the late 1960s, when Atxaga was a university student, things began
to change.  Resistance by the silenced Basques revived, and what had
been a conservative Catholic society began to be heavily influenced by
radical leftist movements.  The armed resistance of ETA, the Euskera
acronym for Free Basque Homeland, began among university students in
the late 1960s.
   'For years the Basque society had been underground, like a potato,'
said Atxaga. 'And in the 1960s a new Basque country was born.'  According
to Atxaga, an elfin man with dreamy eyes beneath thick half-circle
eyebrows, 'Everything that is Euskadi today was born in the resistance
to Franco.'
   Leftist intellectuals created a modern Basque language - Euskera Batua.
Until that happened, Basques spoke a different dialect in each province.
In three decades this newly standardized language developed a new
literature, and in the last 10 years alone it has drawn 100,000 new
Euskera speakers, known as Euskaldunberris or new Basques.
   The school system today offers a choice of classes in Euskera or
Spanish or both.
   The older Basques continue to speak dialect and cling to stern,
Catholic values, while the young, influenced by the '60s generation,
speak the new language and are drawn to leftist politics.
   Language is not the only thing that has been changed by the anti-
Franco students of the '68 generation.  Rancorous political debate
between competing leftist ideologies dominates Basque political
dialogue and fills the new Euskera newspapers.  If graffiti are any
measure of popular support, ETA remains a grassroots organization.
The words 'Gora ETA,' or Long Live ETA, are as ubiquitous as Basque
berets.  The party has continued its policy of armed violence, and
periodically kills Spanish soldiers.  It was Basque radicals who
killed Franco's appointed successor only a few years before the
dictator died in 1975 and forced Franco to come up with a more
democratic succession.  Many Basques no longer approve of ETA's
violence, but they remember that the democracy and limited autonomy
they now enjoy was in part won by ETA.

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* Mark Kurlansky is a Paris-based American writer whose latest book,     *
* about postwar European Jewry, will be published later this year by     *
* Addison-Wesley.                                                        *
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