Puerto Rico

The Basque community of Puerto Rico arrived on the rebound, and in two stages that never touch. The best documented Basques on the island did not come from Euskal Herria but from Venezuela, and no centre grew out of that colony. The one that exists was born much later, in 1995, out of the wish of the island’s Basques, and of those interested in their culture, to come together.

Those first arrivals were families who had emigrated to Venezuela, drawn by employment with the Compañía Guipuzcoana. Expelled from there for their part in a conspiracy against the Crown, they regrouped in Puerto Rico and built up trading houses that collapsed around 1870. It is a story of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, one that did not come directly from Euskal Herria but by way of Venezuela (from La Guaira to Puerto Rico).⁴

The second stage began in San Juan in 1995, when Vascos en Puerto Rico, Inc. was born “as the result of a longing to come together” among the Basques and those interested in Basque culture on the island.² The Basque Government’s official register recognised it on 18 June 1996.¹ Eleven years later, on 7 and 8 September 2007, Juan José Ibarretxe visited the island, the first visit ever by a lehendakari (president of the Basque Government) (the Basque community today).³