- This project, 35 years old, currently has five barnetegis that welcome 3,000 students from educational centers each year to ensure the use of the Basque Country for four days of stay. According to the workers of the plant, the whole project is at risk: "The teachers of the Centers for Idiomatic Strengthening have shown flexibility for the next course and at all times we have been willing to do anything to maintain the project. We have sent more than one proposal to the Department of Education and the answer has been that not every time. How do you understand it? ".
In a note sent by the workers of the Centers for Idiomatic Entrenchment, it is explained that the teachers, parents and other members of society are concerned about the loss of COVID-19 in Euskera, but that at the moment the Basque Government "wants to disconvene" a project of 35 years of progress. There are currently five types of boarding schools of this nature: Elgoibar, Hondarribia, Segura, Lemoiz and Barria.
According to Berria, the Department of Education of the Basque Government has decided "in principle" not to do the barnetegis at the beginning of the course, "and then they will have to see them," he explained. The security measures of COVID-19 have been the reasons for this fact. However, in the note sent by the workers to ARGIA, the workers see the project itself in jeopardy.
Useful to motivate
In the note sent by the workers, the value of these barnetegis for the students is emphasized, since for many students the school center is the only place they have to practice Basque and with the confinement they have also lost it. They have recalled the words of Paul Bilbao, a member of the Basque Council of the Basque Country: "Thousands of boys and girls have not had contact with the Basque Country for months; we are very concerned." And also anthropologist Mari Luz Esteban: "If the body disappears, if the emotion disappears, it will be to the detriment of the Basque people. The survival of the Basque country is not something related to the screens".
This is how the dynamics of barnetegis have been defined: “You can’t learn to speak without talking… We leave school and, in the barnetegi, in a house and a separate environment, to immerse ourselves in another environment, to enter, in Euskera and from the Basque… In the barnetegis we play, and we feel, we enjoy, we speak, we sing, we motivate, we talk, we dance, we dress, we try, we see.
Beautiful words of political leaders for the Basque Country
The workers recalled in a note sent to the press the statements already made by the political leaders who have some determination in the future of this barnetegi project:
Bakartxo Tejeria, PNV list head by Gipuzkoa (28-6-2020). ): "We must have as a strategic objective that all Basques are able to make the leap into use," he added. "In our programme, we are proposing concrete initiatives in favour of our language.
Bingen Zupiria, Minister for Culture and Languages: “There is no other way than agreement and joint work to normalize the Basque country in a natural way.”