The Basque History of the World - Mark Kurlansky [102]
Teaching Euskera was not allowed, but the Basque Nationalist Party and ETA offered “cultural events” that amounted to courses in Batua. Joseba’s teacher was a Basque Nationalist Party activist who, in between cultural events, more than once helped take over the radio station.
Joseba, who had always wanted to be a writer, at first found it difficult to imagine working in the secret language of his parents. That began to change when he met an infirm poet, old before his time, named Gabriel Aresti. Born in Bilbao in 1933, Aresti did not grow up speaking Euskera and was one of the first Euskaldunberri, literally, “new Basque speaker,” a non-Euskera speaker who learned the language through adult education. He went on to become one of the most influential writers of the new language. Although not a nationalist in the political sense—he was closer to the Spanish Communist Party than the nationalists—he was a passionate lover of Basqueness. His 1964 collection of poems, Harri eta Herri (Rock and People), earned him the affection of nationalists and a summons before a disapproving tribunal. But he also greatly expanded the language through such projects as translating the poetry of T. S. Eliot.
Joseba began writing poems and short stories and publishing them in underground magazines, using the name Bernardo Atxaga to protect his true identity. Aresti, having read some of the stories, sent a note telling him that there were only five real writers in Euskera. “If you keep away from the purists you could be the sixth.”
By purists, he meant the “Sabino school,” which rejected all Latin words, denied the evolution of the language, and pretended that a purely Basque language existed. Many of Arana’s invented words, such as Euskadi, had become established in the vocabulary. But there was heated debate about whether such creative linguistics should continue. Linguistic political correctness is one of the oldest controversies in the Basque Academy, of which Aresti was a member. The academy wants Euskera to be a usable, not necessarily a pure, language. Where Spanish words have become common usage, the academy kept them in Batua; modern computer terms have been adopted from the English language. “Batua is a unification of the written language,” said Juan San Martin, who was secretary of the academy in 1968 and a close associate of Aresti. “The only new language came from Sabino Arana, who made up words. We do not invent words. We are opposed to invented words.”
Gabriel Aresti died in 1975, the same year as Franco. The poet was only forty-two. Aside from his work, he left behind the young writers he influenced, the most important generation of writers in the long history of the Basque language.
No one is a prophet
in his own time.
Again I have come
to the idea,
if I had no wife or children
with pleasure
would I die
because Basque rock
would ponder my words.
—Gabriel Aresti, NERE MENDEAN,
(In My Time), 1967
FRANCO GREW OLDER, his regime looking every year more like something dusty and Baroque in a tasteless out-of-the-way museum. But he did not fall from power. There in Spain, in the 1970s, was Europe’s remaining 1930s strutting dictator.
It never went smoothly, but Franco always managed to survive. What small resistance to his regime that he was unable to quell by force served only as an embarrassment to a regime that, in the eyes of the world, never would achieve respectability. In spite of ETA and the Basque nationalists, Franco could vacation in San Sebastián without incident. In September 1970, he attended the pelota national championships. Joseba El