This week, every day, the members of the Basque Government are explaining in the Basque Parliament the functions, intentions and commitments of their departments for this term (2024-2028). The new Basque Government Minister for Culture and Linguistic Policy, Ibone Bengoetxea, has appeared for the first time in Congress. Bengoetxea was born in Bilbao in 1967, graduated in psychology from the University of Deusto, started his political career in 2003 at the City Council of Bilbao and has been managing director of the Association of Basque Municipalities (EUDEL), where he has held political responsibilities in the cultural field for years, from 2021 to his appointment as advisor.

More and more voices say that creation in Basque is precarious, especially in recent years, because many of the people who work in cultural creation in Basque have joined in Lanartean, the Association of Professionals of the Basque Country. As for the newspaper library, Lanartea appeared in the Parliament's Committee on Culture a year and a half ago to claim that the closing of the showcase and the attention to the problems inside the house, cultural policies need "concrete measures" to be built from creativity and in Basque.

It seems that the new Basque Government is going to listen to these calls, to which it has committed itself, at least. In fact, counsellor Bengoetxea said in the Basque Parliament that the Basque Government wants to approve "a new and innovative project to guarantee and improve the working conditions of artists and creators", as well as "support the mobility of Basque creators", increasing their presence in festivals, fairs and international forums. Message for beginners: the idea of promoting "talent".

The objective, in itself, is not new to the government, as the last legislature, the department headed by Bingen Zupiria, announced its intention to draw up a statute on cultural professionals – in this context the Lanarte Parliament had come to the hearing – but it did not materialise in the end.

With the creators in Basque, what?

Bengoetxea highlighted the commitment of her department to: "To promote and facilitate the creation and production, especially that of women and those made in Euskera". He added that he wants to influence the perceptions of the citizens and that he would like society "to be proud of the culture that was born in the Basque Country". And that the whole framework will be established by the Strategic Plan for Culture 2028, which, as highlighted in this article, establishes that the Basque Government is not "the axis" of the cultural policy of the Basque Government, but "the transversal".

Page 53 of the Strategic Plan reads as follows:

“In the Basque Country, the Basque Country has special attention, both in creation and in production, both in the supply and in the transmission of memory. In the Basque Country, culture cannot be understood without the Basque culture, nor without taking into account the whole Basque cultural context. The cultural policies of the Basque Government focus on guaranteeing the possibility of creating in Basque, living the culture in Basque and remembering it in Basque. In all lines of work, cultural content and services in Basque are especially encouraged”.

The three axes of this plan are creation, supply and transmission – the report carried out during Zupiria’s term of office; Bengoetxea now adds the fourth: digitisation. Contents in Basque were included in this second axis in the Strategic Plan, with regard to the supply: "The commercialization and dissemination of culture must be reconciled with the responsibility of offering citizens a diverse and plural cultural offer".

That is, what is suggested is that content will be offered in Basque so that the offer is “varied”. Therefore, as one can understand, the process comes backwards because one wants to offer. On the theme of creators, on the first axis, there is no mention of creators who work in Euskera; now, the new government seems to have changed the discourse a little: it has linked Euskera to creation and not to offer.