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Basque Mexican Maria Pilar Gurtubay is currently in the Basque Country recording the ETB’s program Origen in the process of searching for her Basque roots.  Last Thursday, while she visited in Atxondo (Bizkaia) a farmhouse that used to belong to her family, she was surprised by a large group of family members who came from Mexico, Argentina and Venezuela and different places of the Basque Country itself.  It was a new chapter for this saga that is already organizing another reunion in 2017. 

Atxondo, Bizkaia.  Last Thursday, while recording the new ETB program Origen, to be aired in May, the Basque-Mexican, Maria Pilar Gurtubay was surprised by some members of this extensive saga that gathered to wrap her in her search for her roots.  Some came from outside the Basque Country, like German Blas Gurtubay who came from Argentina, Ricardo Martin Gurtubay from Venezuela and Juan Manuel Abia Gurtubay, from Barcelona.

All of them surprised Maria Pilar and her brother Jose Miguel in Atxondo during her visit to the Akebaso farm house that once belonged to their family.  In the days that followed, the family members did a lot of things together, outside of the show’s filming, and were welcomed at Bilbao’s Town Hall by the Deputy Mayor.

The group began getting to know each other over the last few years on the internet, while they did their family tree, and in September of last year, they held their first big family reunion that also took place in Atxondo.

The first Gurtubay they found was Catalina de Gurtubay, who was from Axpe, Bizkaia, in 1500.  From there, the family spent much time in Bilbao where one of them, Simon Gurtubay, made a fortune by importing cod from Norway.  One of his great nieces would become even richer: the Duchess of Alba, Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart and de Silva Falcó y Gurtubay