In the exile of Paris, Andima Ibiñagabeitia and Jon Mirande joined on numerous occasions. There was talk of literature. Txomin Peillen met Mirande through Andima, and all three of them joined him. And so did Txomin's brother, Robert. Ibiñagabeitia took the road to exile – first Guatemala, then Venezuela – in 1954, leaving Mirande alone. As it is written, Txomin Peillen was encouraged to Mirande in February 1962, when they founded Igela magazine, in the 15th building of the Boulevard of Saint Germain. Fifty years have passed. We traveled to the past with Txomin Peillen. “I was born in Paris in 1932. I had been a two-and-a-half year old child in Zuberoa, half a dozen more here and there, in one Fontenebleau, in the other army… In total, I had been in Paris for sixteen years, but I do not know for sure where I was, or rather, leaving the family meeting and entering the French world, he said: ‘I am not from here!’, it was a strange world for me. Then, having discovered patriotism from 1946 on and made an ascua, I didn't know where I was from. That happens often...” And what would Jon Mirande be like? Peillen responds: “He had also been born in Paris, he had also lived in Euskal Herria, although there were very few out of 1953 and until his death. I know he spent a week every year at the house of Jon Etxaide, in Donostia, and another week at his mother's house, in Sorhüeta, in Xahoene. I remember that at that time I returned from Algeria, that the war there ended when we founded Igela.”

Jon Mirande and Txomin Peillen, two Basques based in Paris who are murdered in the cultural environment of the French capital. “The atmosphere of Paris at that time was intellectual. Intellectuals supported the Soviet Union, led by Jean-Paul Sartre ... Mirande worked in a boring profession with a small salary, but for pride, for snobbery, I didn't want to study, like me, yes, I was studying to be a professor and a headline. Paris knows what it is, then there were also lots of parties, but our holidays were books. However, in summer, in Zuberoa he used to walk through the town celebrations, and spent a week in Donostia in the house of the family of Gotzon Egaña, Arrotz”. This is how the two friends started to write. Jon Mirande began writing in 1947, the following year in Txomin Peill, translated into some Chinese legend, inventing and writing stories for children, various poems and the novel Gauaz egiten da, written in 1953. By then he had already launched his second novel, Itzal gorria. And in 1962, Igela Magazine began to be built. “The censorship of the Basques and the Spaniards pushed us to it. Both Miranda and I were excluded from the articles by Euzko Gogoan. Koldo Mitxelena, for her part, wrote to Mirande that nothing could be published in Egan, otherwise the magazine would be over.”

By refusing to publish works in the two most important journals of the time, Igela was created. In the first issue of February 1962, we read the intention of the publication, in the article Objectives and Functions Differentiated from the Heterodoxos: “Our evil world is full of evil apostles. One pushes a friend into terrorism without him doing anything; the other invites you into virtue without him applying it. The frog does not push anyone to anything, except to think that those who preach us, on the path of good, do not do the same as we do.”

“A lot of people, a lot of people, submit you to a paradise. But we offer you a hell, we burn ourselves with joy and joy (…) What is living if pleasures and pleasures are removed? Does it deserve the name of living? (…) It is the most pleasurable life, that goes without a ray of zuurtzia”, the quote from Erasmus is the one that rounds the heterodoxy spirit of the journal.

They touched humor, not worrying about philosophies or other things. “Mirande told me in Basque that the Philosophy dictionary was not sufficiently developed. I then offered him to make the frog, because a Russian friend had taught me Cocodrilia magazine in Moscow. Mirand had La Codorniz de Madrid and I Mad de EE.UU.” For its part, the Igela in Euskera would reach the Basque Country along the same path. “The Russians chose Cocodrilo, the Spaniards La Codorniz, an animal to name their magazines. We, Igela. Miranda made a poem to the frog, how a moon died, and our frog ‘for lack of flies’ [for lack of money]. On the other hand, the frog, with its mouth open, seems to laugh and sing like a religious litany. Hence the name of Igela.” They say it's a heterodoxa journal. “We assigned that name next to the title, because at that time the culture of Euskal Herria lived under Catholic orthodoxy.”

The goal was to make a magazine of humor. “We decided that self-criticism was necessary for the maturity of a people, because self-criticism was also made in the dictatorships, both in Russia and in Spain. That's what La Codorniz magazine did, for example, during Franco's time. On the other hand, this required humor, at least in our opinion.” They started walking and they weren't alone, because they had some support. We read it in the second issue, starting in Baiona Africa. “Exker mila, for his serious mistakes, to which they have entrusted Igela; to subscribers and honourable people like Mr Karl Bouda, professor at the University of Erlangen; BEÑAT Possompes, professor at the University of Paris, Mr Haritschelhar, head of Basque Musée, and Gueraecondo, Miss. Through his criticisms, he will always try to satisfy Igela to deserve the honor they have given him.” This article, however, sought to expose the criticisms that came to the first issue, despite this sweet beginning of the writing.

They started working, as Peillen did all the material. “Stapling, sending by mail, paying… It was, however, a Maule biarnés, Mr. Teule, who helped me in part. It had a little machine, a printer, and there we printed the frog. He worked in the distribution of the press and in the docks of Paris as a bookseller at that time.” The first issue of the journal also includes the gratitude, in two articles that saw the light in French and Spanish. “Len and the last in French”, “Len and the last in Spanish” say, although also in number 6, the last one was published in French. The translation is ours: “We thank the friends of Biscay, Gipuzkoans, Suletins and Navarros for their confidence and support. We thank the Sulatino Bucanist of Paris, who has helped make the publication of the Rana a reality through constant help and push.”

Mr Teule was not an isolated zuberotarra in the French capital. There were Sulatins, among many Basques, according to Peill: “In Paris we were not all zuberotarras or not. They said that the Basques were over four thousand. There was a small group of bourgeoisies rich in Spanish or in Basque lost, but they were rabid patriots who advised others to speak in Basque and to write in Basque. The Sulatins had an old group. It was called Cambridge. The dances were given outside the Santa Casa de Eskual, and with the money he paid the children the Basque summer trip. The bourgeois said for reproach that they were Spartars of Maule, “les sandaliers de Mauléon” but almost all were Basque and among them they always spoke Basque. The bourgeois affirmed that the girls of Zuberoa practiced prostitution, but the risk of prostitution was commented on by Xarriton and other priests as a pretext and control for the construction of the House of Culture. Jon Miranda practiced this kind of sex tourism, and only once found a girl from the area of San Juan de Pie de Puerto. At that time, the oldest Basques worked as clerics, hotel waiters, farmed… and a few worked as policemen. More young people managing accommodation. Then they bought inns and they became rich. Also Mirande and I were zuberotarras, but we, making the frog. What was Miranda doing? Respond to our vericutes and write in the magazine, black humor, like the Balada of the good Basques, sadism, about how to steal... We never stopped publishing anything, as far as I know, because it was too hard, or for some other reason. I also made offers of humor and brought a false text to the pages of the magazine the sacred life of my Jon Dane Akherrune.” They set off in the direction of the truffle. “From popular literature, in part. In the last issues we publish songs, bertsos and others from popular literature”.

Six numbers were published. Then they stopped publishing it. Lack of money on the one hand and criticism on the other. Among them, those who came from Enbata magazine and those who responded, as we read in number 4: “[The enlightened politicians of Enbata] in no case and in no case would they have the right to do so in the law we have chosen (in the Basque script). That’s why in our second issue we clearly refer to what we think about the hypocritic of the hymns (…) We are as many nationalist Euskaldunes as those of Geu Enbata and before we have discovered nationalism we were. However, following the path they are taking – here too, I have mentioned their moral behaviour, not the truth or the lie of their policy – we believe that more harm is being done than good to our people. Therefore, if we were also one of those who give advice, our advice to them would be: ‘pour une auto-suppression d’enbata’.

The article is signed by Mirande and Peillen. Always in the midst of Zirimola the magazine, until the end as Txomin Peillen tells us: “And I stopped publishing Igela, because I was losing money with our twenty-five subscribers and no subsidy. Moreover, after telling Mirande that he stopped making the magazine, he, with the covers of the frog he had been wearing since before, handed over the last copy that smelled to the far right, without notifying me, printed exactly by the Nazi Goulvenn Pennaod. I did not share the last copy. And I saw him after two months. The cold we had then hardened later, also because I said badly against Hitler's political culture. Mirand wrote to Ibiñagabeitia that I couldn’t see myself anymore… Outside Andima’s death, my wife and I invited him back.”

It's been 50 years and Txomin Peillen doesn't regret it. The frog was canceled after six numbers. “No repentance. From that experience I have preserved something that makes me a secondary writer: between twenty-four books of literature, because I have given five humorous novels plus twenty stories… On the other hand, Napartheid and Ostiela! But they behaved much better and in a freer environment than our magazine...”.