- Maximo Aierbe Muxika has died in her native town of Ataun, at the age of 74. Those who participated in the efforts of the years before and after the creation of Euskaldunon Egunkaria will remind the man that I work so hard for the shareholders of the new project. With great discipline and discretion, with total loyalty, he did not complain much less about the silent and hard task of bringing investors to the new Basque newspaper, which had as many enemies as supporters before its foundation.
Born in 1950, after the 1977 amnesty, Maxima was one of the first prisoners of the Spanish police for belonging to ETA along with Joan Mari Olano. The Aierbe of Ataun's Lauztierreka dwarf have been recognized in Basque politics and culture: Besides Maximus, Karmel, who died a year ago, was tortured and imprisoned again and again, and Inaxito, already deceased, was years abroad. In 2022 Maxima made public in Independiente his disagreement with the new strategy of the Abertzale Left.
In the years he spent in Soria prison, he would take along with Jon Esturo his first book, Xake, the first published in Basque about this game. In addition, in 2003 he published the book Ataungo kanta zaharrak.
He used the prison to delve into the music that has been the great hobby of his life: he learned harmony there and, as Aierbe himself explained to Goierriko Hitza, stayed abroad as self-taught. In 1994 he founded the Eate choir with Dionisio Etxeberria and just a year ago the long cantata Domuit Vascones, written a long time ago, premiered in the church of San Martin de Ataun.
Six days before his death, on June 30, the choir Eate and the ataundarras honored Maxima Aierbe with a recital in the church of Aia (Ataun), in which he was very ill with cancer, as weak as his head. On Monday the last goodbye to the farewell diner took place.