We could say that some political leaders in Spain ought to be a bit more worried than they already are, given that they’re a bit worried about the way things are going regarding Gibraltar in the talks being held about Brexit between the European Union and Great Britain.
Well, we’re not sure what they’ll think or how they’ll feel when they find out that a boat belonging to the Marine Nationale of France has a Zazpiak Bat coat of arms on it. Yes, all seven territories, including the four south of the Pyrenees.
We’re talking about the BSM Garonne, a French military logistic support ship that was put into service in 1965 and which was sunk 100 km / 60 mi off the coast of Réunion on October 9, 2003.
Tampion of the ‘BSM Garonne’
The standard and the tampion of this ship carried the coats of arms of Guyenne, an old French region whose capital was in Bordeaux, in Gascony; and, here’s the surprising bit, the Zazpiak Bat coat of arms with its six quarters, representing Navarre, Gipuzkoa, Biscay, Alava, Labourd, and Soule.
We don’t know if this might be the influence of the New Phoenicia project that was repeatedly presented to Napoleon by the Senator of Labourd Dominique J. Garat between 1803 and 1811 with the intention of creating a Basque state that would join together all the different parts of our nation on both sides of the Pyrenees in an independent unit under the protection of the Emperor.
Garat explained in his project that the idea was to create a unit of “peoples who together possess all the relationships that men can have amongst themselves while have almost none with either the Spanish they’re united to nor the French the others belong to.”
As we said, we’re not sure if there’s any connection here, but our readers won’t deny that seeing a Zazpiak Bat as part of a French military ship’s standard is quite interesting, to say the least.
Postcard of the BSM Garonne
If the defenders of Spanish unity believe that they can rest easy because this ship now rests at the bottom of the Indian Ocean slowly becoming a coral reef, they’d better not. A new Garonne, the BSAH Garonne, is being built at the Breton Concarneau shipyards. We can’t be sure, but we get the impression the new ship will again have the coat of arms of all Basques as part of its standard.
Is Madrid going to send off intelligence officers to find out what hidden plans the two-time invaders of Spain might have for the Basque territories?
This website uses cookies so that we can give you the best possible user experience. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions like recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team understand which website areas you find most interesting and useful.
Las cookies necesarias activan las funciones básicas como la navegación y el acceso a áreas seguras de la página web. La página web no puede funcionar adecuadamente sin estas cookies.
Cookie
Type
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
persistent
1 year
This cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. It is used to store user consent for the cookies in the “Necessary” category.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-non-necessary
persistent
1 year
This cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. It is used to store user consent for the cookies in the “Non-Necessary” category.
PHPSESSID
session
End of browser session
This cookie is native to PHP and allows the website to save serialized status data. On this website, it is used to establish user sessions by passing status data via a temporary, or session, cookie. This cookie has no established expiration because it disappears when the website is closed.
viewed_cookie_policy
permanent
1 year
This cookie is placed by the GDPR Cookies Consent plug-in and is used to store whether the user has consented to the use of cookies or not. It stores no personal data.
__cfduid
permanent
1 month
Established by the CloudFlare service to identify trusted web traffic.
Marketing cookies are used to track website visitors. The aim is to display adverts that are relevant and appealing to the individual user.
Cookie
Type
Duration
Description
1P_JAR
persistent
1 month
This cookie is used to transfer data to Google.
DSID
persistent
1 hour
Established by Google, if you have started a session with your Google account on another device, this is used to link your activity between devices and coordinate ads that appear on them and to convert them.
fr
persistent
3 months
This cookie is necessary for the Facebook “Like” button to work.
IDE
persistent
2 years
Used by Google DoubleClick, it stores information about the way the user uses the website and any other ads before visiting the website. It is used to present the user with ads that are relevant according to the user’s profile.
mc
persistent
1 year
QuantCast platform cookie for granular audience measurements. It stores no personal data, only user identifiers and their browsing.
NID
persistent
6 months
The NID cookie contains a unique ID that Google uses to remember your preferences and other information, such as your preferred language, the number of search results you want shown per page (for example, 10 or 20), and whether you want the Google Safe Search filter activated.
uid
persistent
1 year
This cookie is used to anonymously measure the number and behavior of the visitors to the website. The data include the number of visits, the average duration of visit to the website, visited websites, etc., in order to understand the user’s preferences better with regards to targeted ads.
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE
permanent
5 months
This cookie is placed by YouTube. It is used to trace the information of the YouTube videos that are embedded in a website.
_fbp
permanent
1 day
Used by Facebook to offer a line of advertising products, such as real-time offers from third-party advertisers.
Unclassified cookies are cookies that we are in the process of classifying, together with the providers of individual cookies.
Cookie
Type
Duration
Description
cref
persistent
1 year
Contains data on user navigation interaction and time spent on the website and its sub-pages. This data is used to optimize the relevance of advertisements and for statistical purposes.
d
persistent
3 months
Collects anonymous data on the user's visits to the website, such as the number of visits, average time spent on the website and what pages have been loaded with the purpose of generating reports for optimizing the website content.
i
persistent
1 year
Registers anonymized user data, such as IP address, geographical location, visited websites, and what ads the user has clicked, with the purpose of optimizing ad display based on the user's movement on websites that use the same ad network.
KADUSERCOOKIE
persistent
3 months
Registers a unique ID that identifies the user's device during return visits across websites that use the same ad network. The ID is used to allow targeted ads.
KTPCACOOKIE
persistent
1 day
Registers a unique ID that identifies the user's device during return visits across websites that use the same ad network. The ID is used to allow targeted ads.
na_id
persistent
13 months
Used to recognize the visitor upon re-entry. This allows the website to register the visitor's behavior and facilitate the social sharing function provided by Addthis.com.
na_rn
persistent
13 months
Used to recognize the visitor upon re-entry. This allows the website to register the visitor’s behavior and facilitate the social sharing function provided by Addthis.com.
na_sc_e
persistent
1 month
Used to recognize the visitor upon re-entry. This allows the website to register the visitor’s behavior and facilitate the social sharing function provided by Addthis.com.
na_sr
persistent
1 month
Used to recognize the visitor upon re-entry. This allows the website to register the visitor’s behavior and facilitate the social sharing function provided by Addthis.com.
na_srp
persistent
1 day
Used to recognize the visitor upon re-entry. This allows the website to register the visitor’s behaviour and facilitate the social sharing function provided by Addthis.com.
na_tc
persistent
13 months
Used to recognize the visitor upon re-entry. This allows the website to register the visitor's behavior and facilitate the social sharing function provided by Addthis.com.
ouid
persistent
13 months
Sets an ID-string for the specific visitor. This is used to recognize the visitor upon re-entry. This allows the website to register the visitor's behavior and facilitate the social media sharing function provided by Addthis.com.