Two months have passed since Onintza Enbeitia sang at the Bizkaia Championship in Bertsolaris, but time does not always increase the distance proportionally. They will tell me, to whom I feel within walking distance to this lady who is my double age. When I went to find a drink to sit at the table, I heard in the bar “For the love of that woman.” I didn't think Bustamante would be right. I turned on the engraver and gave the calcamonia of the breasts of Aissa Intxausti who had long been due to her. The terrace has been filled with “not publishing this”, “this cannot be said, but”. That will be interviewing the mother.

We have come to talk about autumn, but soon spring comes. How about winter?

I think so. In general, before the championship I also feel that in Bertsolarism I am quite calm. I think I have my place, a quiet place, a comfortable place, and out there I sing. So, in that sense comfortably and at ease. I do not have the feeling of those dates as remarkable as I have had on other occasions, before and after the competition, in that other season I put it all. I don't have much to prove, and I feel there in a very comfortable place.

What general reading do you make of last year's championship?

Our championship, the finalist, is in part very frantic. Last year, for example, we sang in the third semifinal and three weeks later was the end, and the point. There's very little margin there, but we actually started thinking about the championship much earlier.

When did you start thinking about the championship last year?

I broke my leg in August, and I think the physical situation conditioned the competition. In September, my main obsession was getting up to the championship. So, all the mental straw of the tournament was associated with that desire to be physical. In the end, I stood for the championship and I don't know, I sang at ease. It is then true that this year the semi-finals and the final have been a gift to me, and that has conditioned my feelings with the tournament. In case I made a chronicle, I would say that from despair I made a career physically and mentally for illusion.

If you play eight finals in a row, with the 2018 championship… how does a championship start knowing you’re going to go almost sure to the end?

So far, they've always started with that pressure to go to the end, especially until they got the txapela in 2018. It is true, on the one hand, that I feel that if I win the txapela and then I do not go to the end it can be such, but on the other hand I say: “I’ve achieved the best I could get once, I’ve got the beret, but I want to be here and I’m still here.” So that has given me peace of mind in the last two championships. Now I want to live the championship differently. In recent years, I have become more interested in the new ideologies and bodies that come to the championship. In the 1998 championship, when I started, that wasn't now. I am not in a position to win the txapela again, but I want to be here. I want to be for the first time when two women sing in memory, and I've been, or I want to be when a girl dares to fire a Christ and teach him a chest, and I've been. I want to be in all this, because I've also been in the time when we've been denied all this. Now I have a lot more to enjoy.

We are going to enter last year. I know Lemoa's session was special, even before it brought the result. Your final greeting shows the euphoria well: “My screws dans / have jumped / ja bardin is finished / even if there is no end”. What did that program have?

It was a personal request. In the end, it has never occurred to me that there are five women and one man in the championship. In general, it is true that the atmosphere, the complicity, the friendship and the ease that there was to sing in Lemoa are not in all the sessions, and when I heard that we would enter five girls, that Aissa came in … the truth is that the end seemed minimal to me. There was a way to say “look, or go!” they told us that we have to do verses, because we do, but before we did, and before this was unthinkable. You will never accept why it was unthinkable, but we do it in verses and we are here, we go to the end five.” I went from Lemoa home and couldn't sleep. And then you can't say, but it has to be said, how many people who have despised you are going through your head at the time, and you say, "Look, you were right." For me, Lemoa is that: we were right.

And then the end, again saying we were right. He greets you by heart: “but to endure forever / add the name of force / is my only crime / and merit”. What did that greeting mean there?

The greeting comes after Aissa taught a chest. We are from the time when we were asked to take the breast out to make berts. Our teachers weren't you, our teachers were Jon Enbeita and Jon Lopategi, and they were all men far older than us and conveyed another respect. Everything was different. Of course, at age 15, it was torture for me, but with this I'm not telling the story of my life. One reality is that no one realized that our bodies were different and no one realized how different it was for some and others to breastfeed at age 15.

There has been a lot of talk about the breast and some opinions have been raised, perhaps more with Aissar. What reading have you done since then?

Unfortunately or fortunately, these kinds of things are not yet a jet and are not done for doing. I knew Aissa could do it, but I didn't know whether she would do it safe or not, and when she did, I thought: “I think glass does this here.” It is a courageous exercise in truth. Having seen this, I said: “Well, I’m going to disassociate myself too. This has an ideological significance and I personally will not leave Aissa alone.

I want people to realize what it is, where we come from, where we are and where we can be." Because I prefer to be a bertsolari novato and take all the references and ideologies that exist, but unfortunately, at this moment the person who from the essentiality can show support to Aissa in Bizkaia is me.

I believe that if you had not defended it, you could have given Aissar much more wood.

You could consider an outbreak and it means a lot more. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that Aissa not only did a very courageous exercise, but that television gave him an enormous magnitude. The ball was growing and the only reading that people did is a girl showed a chest. But what's happening here isn't just that, what's happening is we're slowly getting to where we want to be. And for that, maybe as we were uncomfortable, there will be others, today uncomfortable. When I started singing berts, with Azpilwaukee old, and with Lopategi, and when we sang with Mañukorta, there they sat the legs of dinner very open and we were there on a rim with very tight and quiet legs taking the fumes of their cigars, and so they said: “You will say goodbye and then we will do it in verse.” This seemed good to everyone. Now a girl shows a chest and we think of a crystal. What did those men have? Eggs like the ball? They didn't fit at the table, even on stage there was room for anyone, and that they were symbolically showing eggs doesn't matter to anyone. They will tell me not to tell us, but we came from a time when the eggs did not fit onstage. They will tell me!

It is undeniable that the final team itself had a special weight. Even beyond being five women. That doesn't necessarily mean that some things happen, but we all know that if there were 7 men, the same thing wouldn't have happened. Nerea Ibartzabal called it the bris-bris collective. I've idealized maybe, but what did that group have?

What this team meant is there's another way to be in the tournament, another way to compete, another way to celebrate wins and keep losses. This group was also an example of this. I do not know if it is hard to say this, but it has always been meant that the Bertsolaris are a great family, that we are friends… all right, you cannot compare the way of understanding competition in professional sport with that of the Bertsolaris, but I felt at the end of Bizkaia that we are all friends. At the end of 2023, I sang with seven friends. Although later on Twitter some talked about the breakdown of ideological consensus, I think we were all satisfied and we all felt the support of the group.

Did something break?

False, false. If you mean that so far all the Bertsolaris have been from Herri Batasuna that is false, if I am not going to start saying with whom and what I have discussed. If you mean that we all think that feminism will save us, unfortunately it's also a lie. Or does it mean that this is not ideology? Did the ideological consensus break in the end? I think nothing is broken. Bertsolari has something to say that every bertsolari sings in his name. I am very clear that those of us who were at the end of Bizkaia, our difference, had at that time a consensus to deal with competition, and that is worth it. That those who have a very classical and traditional way of living Bertsolaris will not understand that consensus? Well, I don't care. But, as Nerea Ibartzabal rightly said after the end, the competition can be undo, and I think something is built there.

The figures are also mentioned quite a bit. Jone Uria spoke about the percentages of the final: in the semifinals you have always been between six and seven girls in recent years. The general trend is to tend to equalize the most unbalanced proportions in the early stages as it progresses. Why is this? Can you talk about the feminization of the elite?

I would say that girls do not participate in the championship if they do not see a minimum level. I think in the championship, a lot of men sign up without great pretensions, because they like it, because they're in bertso-eskola. This means that there is still great self-demand because we are afraid of social judgment and not by chance. On the other hand, outside the championship, in the plaza it is clear that the data does not change very much and that women represent us. I am sitting with Amaia Agirre, or with Uxue Alberdi Oihana Iguaran. That's a sign of something. That’s not how it says, “I will organize a session based on the bertsolaris I want.” No. Still for many every woman represents something. So in the championship it is true that the final numbers have not changed much, but we must not forget the symbols. Quantitative studies, data and reflection on why this occurs must be done. When still an 18-year-old girl sings for the first time in the plaza or in the championship, she is judged a lot of things beyond the way she sings. Women and probably all dissident bodies. I think seeing five girls and three boys at the age of 12 in a final is a wonderful picture for any girl on the bertso-eskola. We cannot devalue it.

And how are these symbols reflected in the plaza? Or is the square reflected in the championship?

Quantitatively, of course, two worlds are the championship and the plaza. The sessions of five women and three men are very scarce, or five women and one man, and they're not just coincidences, but because there are concrete feminist organizers who want to get it. Finally, the championship is a sign of the plaza. So, of course, in the championship one day you see yourself with five and one by chance and with lots of quotes without anyone forcing you, right? But that's not the reality, of course.

As if we wanted to work with quotas…

People who criticise quotas cannot be fooled. When people come to me, they're always talking about quotas, people say, "Wow." “I do not organize the bertsolaris program according to the quota, I call the bertsolaris I want.”

Because it's man. This is because in the collective imaginary men have more place. The things that are changing are scary to us, but to me too! Things will change for everyone. Feminism will not come and say: “Benga, the camp of Jehoshaphat; those who were majos on the right and those who were evil on the left.” We will all have to relocate, but so will I! The truth is, going back to the chest, we have sung with all those people, with some who have been one and two generations above us, and we have accepted the rules of the game. Everybody. Even the most uncomfortable. And now what, when the rules of the game change, will not accept our game rules? It's not fair. Now will it come to me I don't know who to say we have to do things differently? I don't want to, I haven't told anyone that things have to be done differently, what I've done is pringate and change things.

You're the best and we love you a lot. You know, no?

Yes! This is the case. For me, the two great pride of my life is to persevere and get so many people to love me. For me, listening to Haizea Arana saying, “Onintza Enbeita is our mother” and you applaud… well, look, this is what I never dreamed of, but this is what I wanted. I haven't done all this to be anyone's referent, but even the fattest thing that life has done to me is that. I have been able to stay and it has been worth staying. Now I am clear, it was worth it. How many times have I thought “to the shit, I don’t want!” Well, now I've had less trouble. I have the Bizkaia txapela and it's special for me and all that, but if I don't feel proud it does. Be with you and tell you those things. I am ashamed but at the same time I say: “ostra, ze guay.” For me that is. Or realize, and this cannot be said, for there are many bertsolaris better than me, but I have that. In depth, what I am going to say now cannot be said, but…

Wait, I'll stop the recorder.

Yeah, that's it.

Thank you Mom <3 <3 <3