It’s been a while since we published anything on the blog. It’s been a complicated few months which have left us with no time to do one the things we find most satisfying: writing these stories. But today, we’re back out it, covering one of those topics that is in the Top 10 of our “Most Interesting” category, the Northern Basque Country, which is to say the part of our country to be found north of the Pyrenees.
We’ve collected three videos we found on a website which we recommend because, to us, it’s essential reading, not only for those Basques living in the north, but especially for those of us who are living in the south, who far too often lack basic knowledge about this part of our nation.
The website is Pays Basque 1900, and it’s full of gems from the past and from today.
As a sample, we’ve chosen three videos, one with images from the 1940s, another with scenes from the 1950s, and a third documentary (which we previously brought you a while back here on the blog) which documents the 1960s.
Again, this is just a small sample of what can be found there, including the uncut version of the film Ramontchu. This film was based on the play by Pierre Loti, a man who was Basque at heart; born in Rochefort in 1850, he fell in love with the Basque Country as soon as he discovered it, and from then on decided to be a part of it.
By the way, just as is stated in the introduction to the exposition prepared on the 100th anniversary of this death, which can still be seen at the Bayonne Basque Museum, Loti was already aware, at the beginning of the 20th century, of a problem that has spread not only through the Northern Basque Country, but indeed along the entire Basque Coast: real estate speculation.
He warned of it in 1908! in Le Figaro, in an article that made the front page with a rather scary headline “L’Agonie de l’Euskualleria” (the original article can be read at Gallica).
There, as described in the Basque Museum presentation, he denounced the “exploiters, speculators, and other thoughtless criminals” who, with their development and construction projects were undermining the foundations of that land he so loved, “the last bastion of calm and beauty.”
A current events topic that was even current 120 years ago.
We’ll leave you with the three videos we mentioned:
From the 1940s
From the 1950s
From the 1960s
Last Updated on Sep 24, 2024 by About Basque Country
