In the Iruña Veleia case today, I think there are four issues: the more scientific verification of hundreds of ostraks, the trial of Eliseo Gil and his colleagues, the hunger strike of Gabixola, and the action of the media and the people of Euskal Herria.
Since 2008, much has been said about whether ostracas are true or false. Official academic experts have performed their own evaluations: mainly stratigraphic, linguistic and iconographic. Some oysters appear to be false and a defendant was also testified at the trial. What's more, if you look at our ununderstood eyes today, many of them seem pretty modern.
But are they all false? Are many of the boxes kept in the Archaeological Museum of Álava, even those that have not been cleaned and analyzed, false? Are the analyses and techniques employed by official scholars capable of scientifically demonstrating the falsehood falsehood? Everything points to ‘no’, as several researchers from the European Union have pointed out.
"The trial against Eliseo Gil has judged his actions and that of his group, and not the truthfulness and historical value of the oysters of Iruña Veleia, not yet fully determined scientifically"
Therefore, the members of the Iruña–Veleia Argitu movement request that a sample of ostraka be analyzed in "European laboratories specialized in archaeometry" with all scientific guarantees and that prestigious and independent archaeologists "perform controlled excavations" in the place of graphites. This request to the institutions has already been signed by 144 personalities and 2.2015 citizens (see website Iruña Veleia Argitu). But neither the institutions nor the political parties have responded.
The judicial process against Eliseo Gil and his co-workers is on their way and the appeal phase has been opened. The ruling of June 2020 found her guilty of a crime of scam and falsehood of some graffiti at the National Court. But in the trial against Eliseo Gil his actions and that of his team have been judged, and not the truthfulness and historical value of the oysters of Iruña Veleia, not yet fully determined scientifically.
Precisely, Joxemari Lejardi "Gabixola", with his hunger strike, is calling for decisive and definitive scientific studies. It has been on hunger strike for eighty-plus days, using one of the most ethical instruments of struggle that a person can have against injustice, one of the most violent in terms of peace.
It is a pity to realise that the Basque media has paid very little attention to this hunger strike. There has also been little information in the Basque press, and when they have published something, at the request of the friends of Gabixola. I believe that in Euskal Herria abertzale the small grass-roots struggles, which are not allowed by the political union apparatus, are marginalised. The same happened in the struggle for the teaching staff of the UPV/EHU.
More than two thousand people have signed the Iruña–Veleia Argitu manifesto, many of them of high academic and cultural level. But, at the same time, it is clear that the "intelligentia" Basque/Euskera critique looks elsewhere, and that the hunger strike of the person Gabixola cares little, to such an extent that he laughs and laughs.