History of the Basque diaspora

The third wave is not like either of the two before it. It was not people looking for work who left, but people fleeing, and all at once: it was a political exile, with a government that organised the departure and that later, from abroad, relied on the Basques who were already living in America.

Why they left: the Civil War and the repression

What drove them out was the Civil War, and the repression that came after it. Estimates put the number of people who left Euskal Herria for that reason, between the fall of the northern front in 1937 and the end of the war, at around 100,000.⁹ Unlike the great emigration, that departure had an organisation behind it.

Even before it began, the Government of Euzkadi set up a network to look after those who were fleeing. Its Department of Social Assistance cared for more than 70,000 refugees. According to its report as of 31 December 1936, the capital took in 35,000 people (15,000 children, 12,000 women and 6,500 older men), and a similar number were housed in the rest of Bizkaia. In the refugee census, almost 90% asked for clothing: winter was coming, and many had left home with only what they had on.⁹

Where they went: Europe first, then America

After the bombing of Gernika, in April 1937, the expeditions that took the children out of the country were organised from the port of Santurtzi. More than 30,000 minors were evacuated (other estimates speak of more than 26,000) to France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, Switzerland and Mexico. France was the first destination and Belgium the second.³⁰

The adults went first to France, and from there to America. To the countries where there was already a Basque community, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, were now added Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico and the Dominican Republic, which until then had received hardly any Basque emigration.

What weighed most in the diaspora came afterwards. On 4 October 1940, the Consejo Nacional de Euzkadi (Basque National Council) approved a decree reorganising its Delegations that divided the American continent into four General Delegations, with local delegations under them:¹⁰

That structure was paid for by the emigrants themselves. The funding of the Delegations was the responsibility of the Basque communities established in each country, so the Basque Government in exile was kept going, to a large extent, with their money.¹⁰