Start of the summer. EHZ festival hangover (atx, headache). You want to breathe after a charged course. Flush the head. Reconnect key elements. Take some time with family, see old friends again and rest (a little) in the daily struggle. Really? !...

As a family, walk to the town square to have coffee in the market environment. If there are more sellers and buyers than usual, it is a sign that the tourism season begins. A look at the counters: here is a selling jewelry box in the form of Ezpeleta’s pears, a garfio that has filled with flat tent to make you believe that there your vegetables are from here, along with a coqueta that sells pork meat from Galicia under the panel “charcuterie locale” and the ikurriñas all over the corners. From the bathroom fabric, to the postal card, to the ribbon, to the tip of the scarf… Folklorization and capitalism, the two sides of the same coin.

A young saleswoman who has heard you speak in Basque with her daughters, asking them “in what language we are”. “The language here: the Basque! Have you never heard it? ", you ask naively (but with some assertiveness). Answer: “I don’t think so, I’ve been born and I’ve grown up here.” On the square of this Afrancessed coast, everything is Basque, but no one is Basque.

A few days later, a look at the panels of the Lapurdi ditches on a trip north of Lapurdi to the southeast. The party signs of the town compete with the offer for tourists. “Gala de force basque”, “Spectacle de danses folkloriques”, “Défi de pelote”, “Méchoui traditionnel”, “Coeurs d’hommes du Pays Basque”… there too the words and imaginary are flashing you.

The biggest guns appear when you think you've excited the outsole. On social media you find the “mistake” made by the biggest local rugby team when presenting the sports shirt next season. In reference to the seven provinces of the Basque Country, those of the communication service have named them as follows: “Lapurdi, Basse-Navarre, Soule, Labourd, Garazi, Baïgorry et Bidos”. No comment, really.

Half a century ago they wanted to enter into a postcard the culture of our People, to sell an attractive tourist destination and to consolidate the power of the lords of Paris. What anger for you! The new course comes full of struggle. Turn on the speaker, upload the volume and the Basque Folklore song of the Demencial Spartak group. Ahhhhhh… Arnasa!