The Basque diaspora online

With social media the conversation moved somewhere else. What used to happen on the centre’s website, which someone had to keep up, began to happen in a Facebook group where any member could write. The Basque centres opened the first ones from August 2007 onwards, and in 2012 Oiarzabal published the first academic study of the people who used them.⁵

As of 31 May 2010 there were 75 groups of Basque associations from 14 countries, with 28,352 registered users. More than 37% of those groups had been created between August 2007 and June 2010. The activity was not evenly spread: five groups brought together half of the members, and around 70% of the groups and 75% of the users were in Argentina and the United States.⁵

Oiarzabal asked 481 of those users, from 13 countries, who they were. Nearly all of them, 92%, were descendants of Basques; only 8% had been born in the Basque Country. Of those, 73% were between 18 and 45 years old, and 66% were already members of a Basque centre. They joined above all to keep in touch (29%) and to stay informed (21%), and 78% felt that Facebook had made their relationship with the centre easier.⁵

In September 2012 the company itself took notice of them. Facebook launched its Facebook Stories section with an article on the Basque diaspora and social media, which it commissioned from Oiarzabal. Among the people it featured were Blas Uberuaga and the Alcayaga family group, with more than 1,500 members.⁶