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Barcelona, Catalonia.  It was a busy weekend for the Euskal Etxea in Barcelona as hosting entity on Saturday of the First Regional Meeting of European and Asia/Australian Basque clubs as well as on Sunday of the annual meeting of Basque clubs in the Spanish State.  Sunday’s meeting was also linked to the state mus tournament in which the team from Salou won and who will represent Spain at the International Mus Tournament that will take place in Cancun, Mexico.

Representatives from the Basque Government, who called the meeting, were Marian Elorza Secretary General of Foreign Action, along with Director of Basque Communities Abroad, Asier Vallejo accompanied by Manu Meaurio and Mayte Galardi from the Directorate of Basque Communities Abroad.

Reception at Barcelona’s Town Hall

If the work session took place on Saturday, the local town hall organized a reception on Friday night to welcome the participants to the meeting.  Present at that gathering on the Catalan side were Councilor of the Presidency, Jordi Martí Galviz and Director of Public and Institutional Relations of the Barcelona Corporation Montserrat Martí.  The Basque were represented by members of various Basque clubs led by Basque Government officers Marian Elorza and Asier Vallejo.

They also enjoyed a guided visit of the rooms and enclosures of the consistory, with a historian and Jordi Marti himself as a guide.  This was followed by dinner at a Basque Restaurant/Cider House Sagardi of the Born. Remember that the most enriching of these kinds of get-togethers is the networking, and exchanges that take place between clubs. 

Seventeen clubs represented

Clubs who sent representatives to the meeting include: Paris, Berlin, Rome, Shanghai, London, Bordeaux, Brussels, Barcelona, Townsville, Valencia, Madrid, Zaragoza, Pau, Sydney, Quart de Poblet, Salou and Valladolid.  Remember that at the Fifth World Congress of Basque Collectivities, celebrated in Donostia in 2011, a petition was made that regional Basque club meetings should take place between world congresses.  Such meetings have already been held in the US in Elko, Nevada and Villa Maria, Argentina.  The celebration of the European/Asian/Australian meeting closes the round proposed at the congress.

Saturday’ sessions enjoyed a lot of participation and contribution of ideas.  Funding from Europe was also proposed to fund activities that involved five or more Basque clubs in various countries on the continent and the bureaucratic difficulties that this implies. The Government provided the official goods that the Delegation of Euskadi in Brussels.  The forming of a Federation of European Basque clubs was also mentioned.

Different kinds of Euskal Etxeak

The intergenerational era was one of the points on the agenda.  It was found that it is a problem that affects Basque clubs with longer histories in particular, compared to newer ones.  There is also a different kind of club, with clubs that have adopted the more traditional model focused on the Basque community, and others, without discarding the above, focus their efforts principally on serving as an antenna for Basque culture in the city or country that they are located in, targeting their fellow citizens. Other factors were also mentioned here including having a locale, which supposes capital, especially if there are not many members in the club.

In regards to Euskera, there were many who stressed the work done by Kinku Zinkunegi is excellent and the work done with “Euskara Munduan.”  In response to the Basque Government, Barcelona’s Basque club exhibited the characteristics of cultural activities that it develops at its euskal etxea: carrying out nearly 150 activities a year, focused mainly in more powerfully showcasing cultural production and the Basque reality to the Barcelona and Catalonian public in general.

Economic numbers and the importance of gathering

Finally, on Sunday the annual meeting of Basque clubs in the Spanish State was held with the Mus tournament on Saturday.  The Mus awards ceremony took place at Sunday’s dinner with winners being the Salou team and second place going to Madrid’s Euskal Etxea.

The economic difficulties that are taking place in the country were raised at both meetings, in conjunction with the budget cuts suffered by the Directorate for Basque Communities abroad and the problems that this entails.  On the other side of the balance, the positive debate and the holding of the Regional Meeting for the first time would be summed up to EuskalKultura.com by one of the delegates, in the following way: “In spite of the economic complexities, this forum in which the government was present to answer to questions face-to-face was definitely positive.”