Berkley Center

Made infamous by the terrorist organization, ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna or “Basque Homeland and Freedom”), Spain’s northern region of País Vasco has a history of defining its identity as distinctly Basque rather than Spanish. This autonomous region is home to an ancient language of an unknown origin that is completely unrelated to any Indo-European language. Even though it uses the Latin alphabet, the Basque language is so foreign compared to its neighbors that it is almost impossible to decipher a single word of Basque through cognates.

As a Linguistics major, I am fascinated by the interaction between the Basque language and culture. About a month ago I made a trip to the Basque city of San Sebastián, or Donostia as it is known in Basque, located on the northern coast. What I found surprised me. I had expected to find a culture completely permeated by the Basque language, but what I encountered was the strategic use of Basque to forge a sense of national identity. In contexts of bilingualism, the selection of one language over another has significance as well as consequences. It is often a conscious choice in order to achieve a specific purpose, in this case, that of distinguishing País Vasco from the rest of Spain and securing a national identity.

What first caught my attention upon stepping off the train in San Sebastián was that every sign in the train station was trilingual: Basque in grand letters in the center of each sign, with English below and Spanish above. The trend of bilingualism, if not multilingualism, was also present throughout the rest of the city. Every marker that served some civil purpose was written in at least Basque and Spanish. But even more than the bilingualism, what I noted was the role of English in the struggle between Basque and Spanish dominance. In those signs in the train station, Spanish and English were given the same prestige while Basque took the top spot.

Throughout my entire time in San Sebastián, I noticed that English played a neutral role and a way to avoid the choice between the region’s two official languages. In fact, I was often frustrated that so many people spoke to me in English even after I stubbornly continued to address them in Spanish. Knowing that as a foreigner I would not understand Basque and yet not wanting to give the impression that Spanish was the primary language of their city, the people choose to speak English as a lingua franca. In fact, English was ever-present in the city. While hiking the city’s mountain, I even heard multiple Spaniards give their dogs commands in English. The only way to explain the omnipresence of English in San Sebastián is to label it a neutral language. It was not treated as a prestigious language as it often is at the University of Salamanca, where I study, but rather as a means of avoiding a choice between Basque and Spanish.

There was even a fair amount of hostility towards Spanish and Spain that was quickly evident even in the short time that I spent in the city. During a tour of the city, as the tour guide pointed out a building and explained why it was unique in Spain, a boy of about 12 years walked by and shouted “¡No es españa!” or “This isn’t Spain!” to our group. When I visited the Catedral del Buen Pastor, I found an information sign posted outside the gate originally containing facts about the church in four languages. However, only three remained when I saw the sign: English, French, and Basque. The Spanish section had been completely whited out with spray paint. And finally, whilst touring the city with my American roommates from the hostel, we stopped by a club in the middle of the Old Town, only to be a bit taken aback that there was not a word of Spanish inside. All of the menus, signs, and posters were in Basque.

Although this hostile motif is present in San Sebastián, it is definitely not the norm. Perhaps because it is such an international city which attracts tourists from all over the world, as well as from other parts of Spain, the majority of street conversations that I overheard were in Spanish. I rarely heard any Basque spoken on the streets except for a few filler words like kaixo and bai which mean "hello" and “ok” respectively.

The one place where I did hear Basque spoken in full conversations was when I visited the aquarium. Many of the parents there were speaking to their children in Basque and teaching them the different species of animals with their Basque names. I believe this was an instance of parents trying to preserve and pass on their culture and language, which was why there was such a conscious and concerted effort to speak Basque. This would also correspond with statistics showing that the highest percentage of Basque speakers is actually found in the younger age ranges rather than in the older generations. The youth have embraced Basque whereas the elderly lived under Franco and his ban on regional languages.

However, what I found to be the most standard situation was a mixture of Basque and Spanish. All of the cathedrals and churches offered masses both entirely in Spanish or Basque as well as bilingual ones. The two languages were often blended to incorporate linguistic aspects of both. In cafés, I saw mochaccino spelled as mokaccino in order to adapt the phonemes to Basque spelling, whereas k’s are non-existent in Spanish. Similarly, outside one of the cathedrals I noticed a sign pointing to the entrance of one of the chapels. Instead of using the Spanish capilla for "chapel" or the Basque kapera the two were blended into kapilla. There was a cultural melding and compromise present throughout much of the city, although there is still an inherent conflict between the two languages related to the region’s identity struggle.

It is not easy to define one’s identity, and language does provide a means of doing so. Unfortunately, it is often to the exclusion of the other and creates an atmosphere of linguistic hostility. Hopefully, País Vasco will be able to sort out its national identity, as well as its linguistic one, and work more towards cooperation between the two languages rather than privileging one over the other.