A life between two languages
33 years ago, on February 23, 1991, the voice of Fidela Bernat Aracués died in Pamplona, the last person who spoke Eastern Basque or Roncales as their mother tongue. This variant of Basque was typical of the Pyrenees valley of Roncal (Navarre), located at the eastern end of the Basque linguistic area. Fidela Bernat was born in Uztarroze (Valley of Roncal) in 1898, at a time when Basque was already giving way to Spanish. Her case is very significant: she married a man who also spoke Basque, born in the same valley, and they had six children, but they were not taught their language.
The causes of the loss of Basque
Sociolinguistic studies show that, long before the start of the Civil War and the entry of Franco’s troops into Navarre (1936), in some historically Basque areas, such as the Roncal valley, the chain had already been broken generational transmission of the Basque language. The same studies indicate that in Erronkari (Basque name for the Roncal Valley) Basque began to decline between the 19th and 20th centuries, and that the reasons that would justify this would be, fundamentally, the demographic drain caused by emigration to to other places (quantitative loss of speakers) and the low self-esteem of those who stayed (they believed that their language had no value or function).
The slow recovery of Basque
After a century of linguistic substitution, the Basque language is slowly recovering. According to data from the Regional Government of Navarra, currently 25% of the population of Erronkari are Basque speakers. They are a first generation to have been educated in Basque as their first language by Spanish-speaking families who gained access to knowledge of the Basque language through the network of ikastoles. In this sense, the organizations defending the Basque language highlight the paradigm shift: current Roncales society considers Basque to be a prestigious language, which not only links them to their history but also opens the doors to the future.