In these hours leading up to the 2020 Aberri Eguna, Day of the Homeland, a kind follower of the blog sent us an amzing collection of four images of some documents that were prepared for the 1934 Aberri Eguna, which was held in Gasteiz and brought together about 50,000 people (in a town that had just over 40,000 at the time!).
As we can see in the corresponding entry in the Auñameni Encyclopedia, that Aberri Eguna was very important. There was a movement led by the Spanish Right that wanted to remove Araba from the project of the Basque Statutes that Basque Nationalism was promoting at the time. They weren’t successful with Araba, though they did managed to succeed with Navarre.
This beautiful gift we’ve received has made us think that a fantastic way to pay homage to the great patriots who came before us and helped ensure our nation would not disappear would be to post these images along with an example of a poster of each one of those Days of the Homeland that were held before the insurgent Francoist uprising.
Well really, three, because we weren’t able to find any for the 1935 event in Pamplona, which as you can again see in the corresponding entry in the Auñameni Encyclopedia, was very difficult to organize, and had to be held “behind closed doors”. We were also unable to find posters for the 1936 Aberri Eguna, which was held just before the uprising. This may be because it was decided that on that occasion, each Basque town should have its own festival.
If anyone has any posters for the 1935 and 1936 events, we would be eternally grateful if you could share an image with us, to complete this entry.
Finally, we couldn’t help but think about the foresight of those Basque Nationalist who participated in the European Federal Movement right from the start, and who in 1933, when all European nations were isolating and rearming, they put forward the idea of a “Free Basque Country within a United Europe“.
Amen
This article is one of those we’re posting on the blog to celebrate the Aberri Eguna 2020.
The images of the Aberri Eguna we’ve received
Images of some posters of the first Aberri Eguna
Aberri Eguna 1933 Poster
Last Updated on Dec 20, 2020 by About Basque Country
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