The hand of Irulegi, over 2,000 years old, is being an unprecedented incentive in the national conscience of the Basque Country. Its impact, so that the Basques feel so strong and emotionally challenged, invites us to think about what really lies behind this discovery.
This is not empty news, an event, short-term ephemeral, but an event, basic in the materialization of our identity.
The fact is any singular (rare) creation of universal scope (mentioned by the international scientific journal) that always occurs in a specific place (in our case in Navarra).
Every identity consists of an imaginary (valued images) and a symbolic one (concepts of articulated and shared signs). In this case, the hand on the sheet and the signs written on it.
What is the relationship between identity and event? Every identity consists of the real, the event (creator of the news). In which fields do events appear? In science, art, politics and love. We place the event known as Irulegi in the symbolic and artistic sphere.
The fact breaks with our old imaginaries and symbolic ones, so at first it provokes a certain rejection in us.
Every identity is dynamic or static. Static identity is based on past events. Identity becomes dynamic, revives with the creation of new events.
As the fact breaks with our old imaginaries and symbolic ones, at first it provokes a certain rejection in us, but at the same time it clarifies our subjectivities. That is why it places each person in the socio-political reality of Euskal Herria: in Basque or Spanish identity.
Since his public discovery, Irulegi has uncovered Spanish identities hidden under the hypothetical Vasquism. We are talking about a symbolicity similar to our own (the language and writing used in all creative and artistic processes) and an imaginary (painting as an artistic capacity in rock art), the basis of the origin of the Basque, which deny the ability to have, impregnated with Iberism. Oteiza said with his terminology that if they were able to paint our ancestors it was because they spoke in Basque. And if you spoke, you also wrote.
We cannot forget that our feelings of identity and belonging were somehow “touched” by the possible fraud of Iruña Veleia. The appearance of Irulegi re-updated with all its strength and annulled any defamatory manoeuvre in favour of the Spanish identity.
Because every event divides time and marks a before and a after in each of the areas that occur. So we can say that in Euskal Herria there is and there will be one before and one after Irulegi.
Nicolás Xamardo, Xabier Rodríguez