Spain

The Congregación de San Ignacio is a different kind of association from the Basque houses of the twentieth century. It was not born to gather the colony around a fronton or a dance, but as a religious and charitable congregation: it was founded by the people from Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa and Araba at Court and, like other congregations of the time, it devoted itself to worship and to charity.³ More than three hundred years later it is still active.⁶

The founding

There were some first attempts in 1713. Two years later, on 20 April 1715, just over a hundred people from Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa and Araba living in Madrid met at the Colegio de Doña María de Aragón to approve a set of constitutions. Royal recognition came with a Royal Decree of 21 February 1718: the Real Congregación de Naturales y Originarios de las tres Provincias Vascongadas was placed under the patronage of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and under the protection of Philip V, and he and the kings who succeeded him were regarded as its elder brothers.³ The constitutions published in 1746 give as founders 54 men from Bizkaia, 35 from Gipuzkoa and 20 from Araba.² The Auñamendi Encyclopedia places the founding in 1713.⁵

Among those founders were nobles and high officials, such as the Marquis of Montesacro, its first prefect for Araba, and others who would join the nobility years later, such as Juan Bautista Orendain, first secretary of state and Marquis de la Paz from 1725.³

The Congregación and the diaspora

Its reach went far beyond Madrid. A notice about the Congregación published in 1896 lists those who helped it with alms, donations and bequests between 1715 and 1790 and in 1895, and they were Basques living not only in Madrid but also in Cádiz, Peru, the Philippines, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Panama and Chile. For Beltrán de Heredia, that gives an idea of how important it was among the Basques of the diaspora.² The same notice records the 103 prefects who led it from 1718 to the end of the nineteenth century. In 1895 it had 258 members: 72 from Araba, 100 from Gipuzkoa and 86 from Bizkaia.²

The Navarrese of Madrid had their own, the Congregación de San Fermín de los Navarros, founded in 1683. It was independent of San Ignacio but, according to an article by Ernest Lluch from 1989, its leaders met with those of San Ignacio every six months.²

A church of its own and three centuries of activity

The Congregación built a new church of San Ignacio, on the calle del Príncipe, consecrated on 20 July 1898.³² After the war it was what remained: between 1940 and 1974 no Basque centre operated in Madrid, and the Basque body that stayed active was the Congregación, which celebrated the feasts of San Prudencio, Saint Ignatius and the Virgin of Begoña and held funerals for deceased members.² In 1982 it regained the use of the church and took over the religious activities that until then had been run by the Hermandad de San Miguel de Aralar (see the Hogar Vasco of Madrid).²

In 2018 the Basque Government devoted volume 31 of the Colección Urazandi to it, written by Estíbaliz Ruiz de Azúa and presented on 11 June at the Euskal Etxea of Madrid. According to the Basque Government, the Congregación was still active more than three hundred years after its founding.⁶