Euskal Etxea Jasone

The Euskal Etxea Jasone of Asunción is the only Basque centre in Paraguay recognised by the Basque Government, and it was born of a newspaper advertisement. In 1996 Pedro José Gamarra and Ramón Zubizarreta published a notice inviting the descendants of Basques to found it, and those who answered were descendants and also people with no Basque ancestry who were interested in Basque culture. The Basque Government recognised it on 28 October 1997. Gamarra was its president for eight of its first ten years, and in January 2006 the centre had more than two hundred members, a library, lecture series and its own magazine. On its fifteenth anniversary it organised the I Semana Vasca de Paraguay (first Basque Week of Paraguay), from 1 to 4 June 2011, and the following year the second, with an exhibition for the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Gernika.