Paris 1845. The Labortan economist and politician Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) wrote the satire Pétition des fabricants de chandelles (The Request of the Sailing). Fiercely opposed to protectionism, he ironistically stated that the sailing boats asked for protection against "the competition of a foreign competitor offering its light at too low prices", and that the foreign light supplier was the Sun.

The satire, in the mid-19th century, was at the top of the candle industry, after in 1834, in Manchester, craftsman Joseph Morgan patented the machine that allowed mechanized production. But soon came rivals harder than the Sun, first kerosene lamps and then incandescent bulbs in 1879.

Before that, there was also a great deal of candlestick in the Basque Country. In the early 17th century, for example, the profession that cultivated wax in Vitoria was one of the most important. Elsewhere, for example, in Tolosaldea, candle making and paper making were hand in hand as both used the same raw material: paraffin. And something like that happened with bakery. The pastry shops, when purchasing honey from bees, also had wax, and in some cases Bastiate hated so much the laws and protectionist rules that obliged the pastry shops to buy wax as well. In addition, similar packaging and tools were used in both activities. Thus, some produced the two products at the same time and others, however, jumped from one activity to another. For example, the chocolate company that Norberto Nafarrate had in San Sebastian at the end of the 19th century moved to Salvatierra, where he made wax until the Nafarrete factory had to close its doors in the 1960s.

The candles that were manufactured in this factory had a religious use, as living beings had ceased to be the wax market and were mainly used to give birth to the dead.

The use of candles in rituals comes from Antiquity and are currently used in various religions. Wax has had great weight in the rituals associated with the deceased in Catholicism. Argizaiolas – and their threaded collections – have traditionally been used in tribute ceremonies to the dead in the Basque Country.

Wax and grief

At the time when the deceased were buried in the churches and the families had their own reclinators, they ignited the argizaiolas before the footprints. But as the habit of burying the dead in cemeteries and removing the occupants of the churches spread, the argizaiolas went extinct and the final blow occurred in Vatican II. It was granted by the Council in 1965, when it decided to replace individual reclinatoria with continuous banks. In the church of San Bartolomé de Amezketa this transformation was not carried out and reclinatoria are still being used. And every year they keep on igniting the argizaiolas to give birth to their dead.

But, with exceptions, the habit of cultivating wax and paying tribute to the dead has been lost in our land. For this reason, the University of the Basque Country/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, as part of the summer course programme, will take the course “Argizari galdua: archivers, knowledge and creation” in Baiona on 19 July, within the broad programme of the same name. The course aims, among others, to value and protect the know-how related to the production of wax, “a handicraft in danger of extinction”. But, in addition, it is important to note that these ancestral practices guaranteed a closer and more natural relationship between the living and the dead, with the loss of wax and the loss of that connection between life and death.