Basques, strangers on screens
It has just been concluded if we look at the budget, the programming, the number of spectators and the media impact that constitutes the most important audiovisual event in the Basque Country: San Sebastian Festival. And in this edition, once again, we Basques have been second-class citizens.
Only 10% of the programming was seen in Basque, bilingual or subtitled Basque. The festival’s regulation clearly states in its article 6 that all performances must be offered in Spanish or Spanish. There are no references to Basque. A festival with a budget of 8M€ (more than half of our pockets) discriminates against Basques. Would we accept in the same way that public money is granted to an act promoting discrimination on the grounds of gender or race? That's my question.
The context of the festival seemed to me to be a perfect excuse to review the serious situation of the Basque people in the audiovisual media, in general, and to look ahead to reality.
If we jumped from the festival to the cinemas, we would see that the violation of rights suffered by the Basques in: Only 1% of films offered annually in cinemas throughout the Basque Country are in Basque (2.3% in CAPV). Four or five films in Basque manage to reach the halls and 12 films folded for children. Nor are there any signs of international success of films dubbed or subtitled to the Basque language. The desert.
In streaming platforms that have become the main means to watch movies and series, the Basque offer does not reach 0.1%. It is true that in this last area the popular initiative has mobilized parties, institutions and companies, and some progress has been made on the two platforms that dominate the market; a year ago on Netflix you could watch 3 movies in Basque or with subtitles in Basque, today 40. They've gone from Primevideon's 1 to 44. There's something.
However, the presence of the Basque Country on the different screens and supports that dominate our leisure (smartphones, tablets, television, cinema, computer...) remains null, and I believe that it is having a great influence on the use of language (without denying the existence of other factors). Recent research has shown that the use of Euskera in canteens and backyards is decreasing. Also, the use of Euskera in the street, between 2006 and 2021, has decreased by more than one point in the Basque Country. In addition, in the last 5 years this decrease has been very pronounced in the municipalities of Euskaldunes. Data enabling all alarms to be switched on.
I'm going to tell you a related anecdote. Two weeks after starting the course, I found our 3-year-old son playing in Spanish in the room.
“Hey potoko, from you to you?” You know that in our house you are in Basque…! His answer left me frozen. “Ask me dad, I’m playing!
The emergency is obvious. Not only in the Basque families of the urban centers, but also in the respiratory zones it is more and more frequent that the crews of fathers and mothers, even if they work in Euskera in the plaza, listen to the children play in Spanish to the superheroes or whatever. Is it the ghost of linguistic substitution (Language Shift)?
We need renewed and bold language policies adapted to the current situation. In all areas, but especially in the audiovisual field: it is urgent that the institutions adopt new criteria, structures and laws that revolutionise the situation, not only because they have to be guarantors of linguistic rights, but because the future of the language itself is at stake. Among other things, the laws of the Basque Audiovisual and Cinema, and the Audiovisual Council that drafts and executes them.
Alex Aginagalde, member of the platform Apantallamiento Euskaraz
Bidali zure iritzi artikuluak iritzia@argia.eus helbide elektronikora
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