Italy

No study has been found that documents a Basque emigration to Italy comparable to those to America. The Basque community of Italy is small, professional and academic, and its only centre is not a home for a colony but a project for spreading Basque culture. It was born in Rome in 2002 to reach anyone interested in Basque culture, Basque or not, and what it does most is teach Basque at the city’s Università Popolare (Popular University).

It is called the Associazione Culturale Euskara. Eusko Ikaskuntza dates its creation to 2002, and the official register of the Basque Government recognised it on 19 November of that year.²¹ When euskalkultura.eus visited it, at the end of 2003, it had been recognised for “a little over a year”.³ In 2005 it set up a Department of Basque Language and Culture at the Università Popolare di Roma (the euskal etxea of Rome).² Ten years later, in 2015, Eusko Ikaskuntza gave it the ENE prize, which recognises work on behalf of the Basque language outside Euskal Herria.⁴²