History of the Basque diaspora

What a Basque centre does has changed with each generation of members. It was the building where Basque culture lived, the printing press for what could not be published in Spain, the mainstay of a government in exile and the shop window of the community before the country that took it in; today it is also the place where people learn Basque and from which they work with the Basque Government.

Home of Basque culture: associations, publishers and institutes

The centre was, literally, a building, with its premises, its library and its assembly hall, and around that building everything else grew. The Laurak Bat of Buenos Aires was founded on 13 March 1877 by thirteen young men gathered in the Café Milán on Calle Cangallo, and it is the oldest Basque centre still active in the world. Under its roof were housed Acción Vasca de Argentina, the Editorial Vasca Ekin, Emakume Abertzale Batza, Euskaltzaleak, the Eusko Kultur Etxea and the Instituto Americano de Estudios Vascos.¹⁶

Its members give a measure of how much it came to move: they went from fewer than 400 in 1938 to more than 1,100 in 1952, its all-time high. The years between 1940 and 1960 were those of the greatest production and spread of Basque culture in Argentina, and the centre was the hub of that network.¹⁶

They printed abroad what could not be published in Spain

Part of what could not be printed at home was printed abroad, in the centres or thanks to them.

Euzko Deya was born in Paris on 29 November 1936, was published in French, Spanish and Basque, and was continued in London (1938), Buenos Aires (10 May 1939) and Mexico (1943) as the official voice of the Basque Government in exile. The Buenos Aires edition was published until 1987 and had correspondents in Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, the United States and Venezuela. It was not funded by the Delegation: it was kept going by subscriptions and advertising, that is, with its readers’ money.¹⁷ In 1942 the Basque publishing house Ekin was founded in Buenos Aires.¹⁶

One book shows up close how it was done. Inocencia de un patriota was a banned work in Spain, and its manuscripts left hidden in the hem of the cassock of the Navarrese Capuchin Pío de Oricáin, who was carrying them on behalf of Ángel Zabala, first president of the PNV (the Basque Nationalist Party) after Arana’s death. They were printed in Buenos Aires, at the press of Sebastián de Amorrortu e hijos.¹⁸

They paid for the Delegations of the Basque Government in exile

The Basque Government in exile relied on the centres to keep its structure going in America. The funding of its four General Delegations on the continent was the responsibility of the Basque communities in each country.¹⁰

They made the Basque community known in its new country

The centre did not only look inwards: it was also the way the community made itself seen in the society that took it in. In 1882, on the initiative of the Laurak Bat, the Plaza Euskara was created in Buenos Aires. Its opening was attended by 3,000 people, and figures from the Buenos Aires elite passed through it, presidents of the Nation included. When it declined it was sold, and with that money the centre bought in 1903 the plot where it still stands; its first premises of its own opened in 1904.¹⁶

From teaching Spanish to emigrants to teaching Basque to their grandchildren

Gloria Totoricagüena describes how the centres transformed their services according to what each generation needed. To the newly arrived immigrant they offered “economic and social services together with instant integration, friendship and belonging to a group”; later they turned to “the defence and preservation of cultural identity”.²⁸

In practice, the function turned round inside the same building. The centre that had taught Spanish or English to the grandfather just off the boat, and had helped him look for work, went on to provide genealogical information and to teach Basque to the grandson who has never moved from there.²⁸

Around those functions grew a social life that the same author lists: libraries, orchestras, choirs and dance groups (with nationalist lyrics, and working as a “powerful factor in socialisation”), monthly dinners, annual festivals, trips to the homeland and international mus tournaments that came to connect twenty-one countries of the diaspora.²⁸ And on the subject of the kitchen, she notes:

“If there is a Basque Centre, there is always a kitchen.”²⁸

That kitchen is often the door through which non-Basques come in: many centres have a restaurant open to the public, in Uruguay, Argentina, the United States and Mexico.²⁸

What they do today: Basque classes and work with the Basque Government

Today the centres teach the language and act as a bridge to the Basque Government.

The first can be seen in the classrooms. The Euskara Munduan programme, run by FEVA, trains teachers for the teaching and spread of Basque in Argentina and other Latin American countries, and the barnetegis, immersion weeks, are held in the centres themselves, such as the Unión Vasca de Bahía Blanca or the Basque centre of San Nicolás.¹⁹

The second is diplomacy. The Basque Government today describes the community abroad as a “fundamental asset in the diplomacy of the Euskadi Global strategy”, and maintains that it is the diaspora itself that is asking for new policies, as was reflected in the Plan Cuatrienal de Colectividades Vascas 2024-2027 (Four-Year Plan for Basque Communities).²⁰ Its grant lines say what is expected of the centres: Basque courses, economic relations with Euskadi, collection of materials on the Basque presence in the world, and humanitarian assistance to Basques without income.¹

Centres that lose members and new centres that appear

The diaspora is neither simply growing nor simply fading away, but changing shape: the large urban centres of the emigration are losing members while small centres of grandchildren appear. From the sixties onwards the Laurak Bat entered a slow decline, and in 2002 its then president, Jon Uriarte, summed up the problem without embellishment: “the centre has not adapted to the changes in society over time”, and he described it as “the old Basque Country, not the new Basque Country”.¹⁶

At the same time, since 1980, dozens of new centres were being born in the interior of the country, founded by descendants (chapter 6).