Josebe Blanco and Luismi Atxa have a three-year-old daughter, Maddi. He's enrolled in the Model D school. However, he can hardly speak Basque with his neighbours, since almost all of them do so in Spanish. Although she lives in the Lakua neighborhood, she goes to school in the Old Town and has three Basque children as her classmates. Many are immigrants. Depending on their origin, they do it in Spanish, Arabic, Basque or Wolosphere. When they meet, model D babies do it in Spanish. Little Maddi is in a period of full socialization, he is monolingual and therefore surrounded by Spanish speakers is not comfortable, neither in school nor on the street.

Josebe Blanco (Gipuzkoa) has a goal in mind: that children can live in Basque with total freedom and comfort. Maddi met two Basque children in the neighborhood playground and almost without time to get to know each other the mothers exchanged phones, among them to stay together once. The next step was to disseminate the call through the media and word of mouth, that is, to bring together the Basque children of Vitoria-Gasteiz outside of school hours for play.

17 children playing

From a one-year-old boy to a nine-year-old boy, 17 Basque children met with their parents. Most were between two and four years old. Josebe Blanco was very happy with the result obtained, because he didn’t even know anyone would show up. The associated families come from different neighborhoods of Vitoria-Gasteiz and although all the children are studying in the D model, they belong to different schools such as Armentia, Olabide and Landazuri.

All these children learn Basque, their mother tongue is Basque and their parents are Basque. “Do you need to meet the Basques in the amusement park?”, we asked Blanco: “You may think that what we are doing is Martian, to separate the Basque children and get them together to play, but all we want is that, just like other children in their own language, our children can speak Basque.” When he had the idea he commented with some friends and they asked him if he was sure of what he had to do, if it could not be racist, snob or sabinist. Blanco confesses that he was afraid, and that he finds it sad to make such a call, “but for the moment I have not found another way”, than organizing a network of Basque children by neighborhoods.
Maddi’s mother recalls the limitations and difficulties of the school. There are schools in Vitoria-Gasteiz that offer the natural D model. They make sure that all the children in the area are Basque, even if that is not always the case afterwards. They are usually small groups and are not included in the ratios of the room; these rooms are usually suspended. The danger of the formation of ghettos is repeatedly placed on the table. Another trend is to mix Basque children with Spanish speakers and speakers of other languages so that Basque children can spread the Basque language among their peers. Blanco is clear: “How are children going to achieve what language policies do not?” If Basque children come together because they do not come together, and if they do not come together because they do not come together, it is not easy to find ways to create opportunities to use the Basque language. However, with the Basque mother tongue being with the Spanish speakers “our children always lose”.

To plant trees

It seems that the Basque parents in Vitoria do not want to have their children scattered with respect to the Basques. In addition to the 6th of November, the second call was made for the 27th of that month and three more families appeared. The blog has been opened (amahizkuntza.blogariak.net) to connect families and attract new ones. Other information is also beginning to be added. For example, the list of shops, companies and others that offer a service in Basque in Vitoria-Gasteiz has started to be compiled.

The next meeting was held on 15 January. They're going to plant trees in some parents' fields. As Blanco has told us, the target is not huge, they have started slowly and you will see the way this initiative takes place.