Belgium

The Basque community of Belgium today has a single house, in Brussels, where descendants of Basques born in the country, Belgians and Basque professionals who have come to the European capital meet. The Basque Government’s official register recognises one Basque organisation in Belgium.¹

It is the Bruselako Euskal Etxea, which was formally constituted in November 2010, driven by the Basque community of Belgium: descendants of Basques born in the country, Belgians and Basque professionals living in Brussels. One of its founding members, Jean-Louis Seiller, is the son of a woman from Donostia-San Sebastián born in 1930 and sent to Belgium in 1937.⁴ It was not the first Basque house in the city. Before it there had been another Basque centre, Txalaparta, which disappeared from the register in 2004, and Brussels went seven years without a Basque centre.⁴⁵ The Governing Council recognised the new one at the end of December 2011, for the purposes of Law 8/1994.⁵¹

Its activity revolves around language and music: Basque classes twice a month, a mintzapraktika, or conversation session, on the first Tuesday of every month, and the Txalaparta choir, created in 2010 with ten members. When it started, it had plans for a dance group and pelota classes.⁴ Its premises are on rue Fernand Bernier, in Saint-Gilles.⁶

In the same city there is also the Delegation of the Basque Country to the European Union, heir to the Basque Government Office created in 1988.⁷