Spain

The history of the Basques in Barcelona is split in two by the war. Before it there was a Basque-Navarrese centre and a batzoki that sought out the port, where the Basque sailors arrived; during the conflict, the city took in the Delegación de Euzkadi en Cataluña; and afterwards came forty years without a Basque house, until the Euskal Etxea of 1979, which closed and opened again in 1994. That history is told by F. Xavier Medina in his volume of the Colección Urazandi.⁴

Before the war

For those years, Medina relies on Jesús Altube, who had lived in the city since 1923. According to his account, that year the Solar Vasco-Navarro existed in the passatge Escudillers, with an assembly hall, a choir, txistularis and dulzaina players, mus tables and a football team, the Laurak Bat. According to Medina, it hardly ever went beyond a hundred members, when the Basques of the city already numbered more than a thousand. It was also frequented by the Basque merchant seamen who called at the port. In 1923 the Society of Basque Studies organised a Basque class there.⁴

The port also shaped the Batzoki, the premises of the Basque Nationalist Party opened in 1930: its first moves sought to be close to it, because it was frequented by the sailors of the Sota y Aznar and Ibarra shipping lines. Altube described it as “a kind of embassy”. It had a choir, ezpatadantzaris and txistularis, and with the sponsorship of the Generalitat it promoted a week of Basque opera at the Liceu with the Orfeón Donostiarra. It closed with the war.⁴

When the Basque Government was in Barcelona

During the Spanish Civil War refugees from all over Spain arrived in Catalonia, and among them a sizeable group of Basques who came in across the French border. The Comité de Milicias Vascas de Cataluña was formed and, to look after the refugees, a Secretariado Vasco. With Manuel de Irujo, Minister of Justice of the Republic, as representative of the Basque Government, the Delegación de Euzkadi en Cataluña was created, at passeig de Gràcia, 63, and the Generalitat granted it the status of an official residence. It was not the only one: the Basque Government opened other delegations in Paris, Bayonne, Bordeaux, Alicante, Valencia, London and Madrid.⁴

The Euskal Etxea

After forty years without a Basque house, a group of Basques in Barcelona held the first assembly of the new Euskal Etxea on 15 March 1979. Two weeks later they defined it in their minutes as a cultural and non-political body, to unite the Basques and sympathisers of Barcelona and its province.⁴ It had premises on the carrer Pelai, but low participation and internal problems led it to close its doors in 1990, although it continued to exist legally.⁴

At the end of 1993 a new board relaunched it and found premises in the old town, next to the basilica of Santa María del Mar. In 1994 it started up with 317 members and new statutes, and Basque classes were once again its most requested activity.⁴ Today it has its premises on the placeta de Montcada, and the register credits it with 366 members.¹