Kirkch01's List: Basque

• The succession crisis in domestic groups in Fuenterrabia is so acute that the majority of the farms operating now will not continue to operate in the next generation. The parents cannot attract their children to stay on the farm and marry.
•  Factory jobs exist and the children eligible for the heirship prefer those jobs to farming in almost every case. The females generally refuse to marry a farmer and take a husband that is a factory worker or fisherman. The parents are faced with a situation in which the heirship that was competed for in the past has become a liability that no one wants.
• Author:  Greenwood, Davydd James
  Title:  Agriculture, industrialization, and tourism: the economics of modern Basque farming

  Publisher:  Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1971 [1989 copy]. 2, 14, 353 leaves: ill., maps
• The decline of the prestige of agriculture has been very strong here, and the local factories and fishing industry provides an alternative social existence of a higher status
• Thus tourism has exacerbated the tendency of agriculture to lose prestige to the point that    economic incentives are insufficient to make the young stay on the farm.

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• Basques live in southwestern Europe straddling the French-Spanish border. There are four traditional regions (Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa, Nafarroa, Araba) on the Spanish side and three (Lapurdi, Behe-Nafarroa, and Zuberoa) on the French side. While the seven regions have not been unified for nearly a millennium, the Basques remain one of Europe's most distinctive ethnic groups. Until recently the Basque homestead was a mixed-farming enterprise which emphasized self-sufficiency. Now the Basque country is one of Iberia's most industrialized regions and only a minority of the population is engaged in agriculture, which has become increasingly industrialized.

• Heiberg, Marianne. 
     The making of the Basque nation
• By the mid-1960s the Basque reaction to the immigrants had turned fervently hostile. During my first field trip in 1972  maketos or  castellanos were a constant topic of piercing complaint. People felt overwhelmed and said that they had become a minority in their own land. ‘Our house is no longer our own!’, they repeated. Although jobs remained in ample supply, many Basques saw the immigrants as usurpers of scarce employment. ‘Han venido aquí para robar nuestro pan!’ (they have come here to steal our bread) was a common expression that reflected widely held attitudes.
• Search Result:  Basques often claim that they and the immigrants simply occupy two distinct socio-cultural worlds. The differences between them impede proper communication and mutual understanding. Underlying this stress on cultural divergence is also a sense of Basque superiority rarely admitted to publically, but often discussed privately. The immigrant is seen as arrogant, uncultured, untrustworthy and out only for himself, a scornful image reflected in numerous jokes and children's songs.
• The immigrants were seen as carriers and representatives of Francoism and personified the oppressive state intent on destroying Basque life. The political values of the immigrants, it was claimed, were moulded by the  [Page 97]  Francoist press and educational system which had taught them to despise all things Basque as unworthy and subversive.
• Greenwood, Davydd James.
     Agriculture, industrialization, and tourism: the economics of modern Basque farming
• Douglass, William A..
     Culture summary: Basques
• The Basque Country was largely untouched by western European feudalism, and there is a common belief that every Basque is a nobleman. There is considerable social mobility, and wealth differences do not automatically determine social status. However, there is an urban Basque plutocracy of factory owners, bankers, and wealthy professionals who relate more to the Spanish and French national elites than to their fellow Basque peasants, shopkeepers, etc. There is a near castelike division between Basques and non-Basques, with the latter constituting much of the lower-class, urban proletariat. They are the frequent targets of resentment and discrimination
• The final and most decisive influence on the local economy has been national and international tourism. Fuenterrabia has always had two distinct types of tourism. in the pre-Civil War period, Guipúzcoa had been the summer playground for Spain's royalty and hence for Spain's aristrocracy as well. This type of aristocratic tourism was in evidence as early as 1913 in the form of at least 30 large summer villas built on what was previously farm land in Fuenterrabia. Though the royalty disappeared, the association of this area with aristocratic ways has continued unabated and the desire of the rich to summer here is evidenced in their key role in inflating the value of land out of the reach of the farmers.

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