United States

This chapter does not tell of an emigration but of an exile. For almost thirty years the Basque Government had a delegation in New York which, in the years of the world war, worked almost as a chancellery, which took Francoist repression to the United Nations and which sought, with little success, the support of the Basques of the West.

Its envoys arrived in New York on 19 August 1938. They were led by Antón de Irala, and travelling with him were Ramón de la Sota Mac Mahon, Manu de la Sota Aburto, the journalist Juan de Aranburu, Eustacio Arritola and José de Urresti. They opened the office in the New Weston Hotel, in Manhattan, and later settled at number 30 Fifth Avenue.⁸

With the world war, the lehendakari (president of the Basque Government) himself came to the city. José Antonio Aguirre settled in New York, and between 1942 and 1945 the effective seat of the Basque Government was there. Aguirre supported himself with a teaching contract at Columbia University, which was in fact paid for by Manuel de Ynchausti. It was the first period of great activity for the delegation, which then worked almost as a chancellery.⁸

From New York, the government in exile took its cause to the United Nations. In May 1946, Aguirre, accompanied by Irala and Jesús de Galíndez, handed the Secretary-General, Trygve Lie, a report on Francoist repression in the Basque Country.⁸

Galíndez would end up at the head of the delegation. After Irala left for Europe in 1949, several members ran it on an almost provisional basis, until in 1950 he was appointed to the post. Like Aguirre, he was a visiting professor at Columbia, and he held the post until his disappearance in 1956.⁸

After Galíndez the post was held by Jon Oñatibia, Jon Bilbao and Pedro Beitia. In 1966 the last delegate stepped down and the delegation closed.⁸

The Boise sub-delegation

The delegates did not stay in New York. They also went looking for the Basques of the West, and in Boise a sub-delegation was set up under Jon Bilbao. The atmosphere he found was hostile. The Basques of Idaho, mostly of Biscayan origin, had made their own the view of the Spanish Civil War spread by the American Catholic Church, and they distrusted the Basque Government for its closeness, they said, to the “red element”.⁸

Bilbao chose the cultural path. He researched the life of the sheepherders, learned Biscayan Basque, the Basque of most of the Idaho Basques, and taught Basque history at the Boise Junior College. He also asked the Basques publicly to become American citizens, so as to reduce the influence of the Francoist consulate. He did not achieve what he was after, and in September 1940 he left to study at Berkeley.⁸