In the last book published by Joxe Azurmendi, it has been a discovery or a revelation, a tribute to Hernaniarra Agustín Pascual Iturriaga (1778-1851).

In Basque liberalism, says Azurmendi, Nordic chauvinism and the old Basque complex, characteristic of the colonized, have been married. For conservative traditionalists, to enter the Basque school to immunize and isolate the Basque people from the plague of new ideas, and for progreen, the objective of liberal educational bilingualism was to turn the Basques into authentic Castilian.

In this context, Iturriaga, while acknowledging the need for Spanish for the Basque, wanted to avoid the “rings” and similar that were used until then, and at the same time the Basque liberal and cult Iturriaga did not want to see them in schools: “a systematic and lasting spell against the Basque language”, which wanted to see the Basque people developing in their own language the cultural life and social relations worked. Euskaldunes for this purpose:

a) had to overcome its complex and self-government in order to be able to act and not to be publicly ashamed in a normal manner in Basque; and

b) The normalization of the Basque Country itself, in order to make it valid in any area within the Basque Country. Learn to some extent “euskara batua”.

Iturriaga clearly saw that the main cause of the loss of Euskera was politics:

“If peoples or provinces with different languages become part of a State or a nation, mastery will be the language that the government reserves, because all interests and advantages come together to cultivate and generalize it. It will fly over all the others (...) and will extinguish them until their total elimination. This is the position of the Basque language in favour of Castilian for centuries.” (p.320)

The accolades and apology, beauty and antiquity of Euskera are useless “we will stay like a fable raven, swollen in vanity and without cheese”. Then -all at the same time - practical interests are also in favor of Castilian: our need to appropriate it, if we want to maintain our political relations with the government, to seek employment and employment in different professions on the peninsula or on the other side of the sea.

Linguistically and culturally, he was not in favour of isolation, but rather of the relaxation of political ties: “It is his opinion that Euskal Herria should unleash the old links about Madrid and achieve more independence”; at that time it was considered that relations between the Basque provinces should be strengthened and “before Xaho has called for the recovery and strengthening of the Basque national body. Unfortunately, Hernani’s political views have not expanded further, and above all, they have always joined the pedagogical project.”

As for the reflection in favor of Euskera, in the background I saw two things necessary for the salvation of Euskera: one, the one that the school has to give, cultural normalization; firstly, by teaching dialectal differences and traditional expressions (which will be enriched with already exceptional words and phrases) and secondly, “that our language has been set to a certain extent with the conversations already mentioned, it will become widespread in our country and will become understandable.” Society must give the impetus and the advantage of this social normalization of language:

“We have already shown that they prevail over non-dominant languages because they work more than the dominated ones. Let's work in the Basque country, and we'll see that the same cause brings the same consequence. But how are we going to work in the Basque Country if we see that all our interests and advantages are against it? We will work those interests and advantages in favor of the Basque Country”. (p.321)

The Hernaniarra was optimistic with his project: “Who knows if the Basque Country is also going to recover in the villages where the language is about to die and disappear?” (p.321)).

And Azurmendi's conclusion is that Agustín Pascual Iturriaga was one of the cultured liberal sages (in the style of Jovellanos), that type of liberals were very few in time and form.

Azurmendi's latest book serves, among other things, to clarify other points, to recognize Iturriaga in his place and to thank him for the work he has done.