I have recalled the end of the resignation of 25 years ago to continue playing in the Spanish team through the middle Argia in mid-November. This trip has given me the opportunity to look back and reflect.

I've seen international sports competitions in the form of inter-country sports wars, an unarmed army, like a war, competing with each other. This is how I continue to watch the Olympic Games and any international championship, big or small. Everyone for their country, in a war, against other countries, competing as an athlete.

International sport is the struggle for war and sport war involves feeling, pride and adherence to one’s homeland. That is why international sport is undoubtedly a political tool that moves the emotions and feelings of the people. A major political and strategic instrument for a large, small, rich or poor nation.

Our small Basque Country, which has no chance of participating in these sports wars, has hardly any armies and many Basque athletes participate in the French and Spanish armies. It seems to me that in the last 25 years more and more sportsmen and women are taking part in the sports armies that beg and reject our country, as well as the presence of these sports armies in training, matches and competition formats in the Basque Country. I think it is serious that this presence is in the process of standardisation. More serious, pride and adherence.

It is clear that in the last 25 years no significant step has been taken in favour of the Basque Army, with exceptions. On the contrary, the efforts of the French and Spanish Sports Army continue to grow. We are fully immersed in the sports parameters of the states that have colonized us. Every day they get big enough for us to make our own parameters and normalize that situation. In other words, to be French or Spanish also in sport.

Also the entities that manage sport in our territory (clubs, federations, institutions, etc.). ). ), in different measures, set out a series of immersion points in these parameters, promoting standards and initiatives, eliminating our identity, normalizing and imposing the identity of others, as links of the other sports system. But because we have normalized that dive, we've turned it into daily bread and I think we've internalized it that way.

Sports organisations, clubs, federations, institutions, sportsmen and women, the media, etc. We have a certain responsibility in defending our identity as a people. As always, when we do for our people, they accuse us of politicising sport, while in daily life, when we are imposed by the laws and regulations of the settlers, sport is not politicized.

I believe that until Euskal Herria is independent we will not see the selection of Euskal Herria in a standardised way, but I would like it to be wrong. However, as long as we are colonized, I would like the different sports entities of Euskal Herria, each with their degree of responsibility, to bet on our identity and, if it cannot be done, not to give rise to normalizing and imposing identity and foreign identity.

Through the current international sports dynamics, our young people practice sport in the French and Spanish federations. Then, to fight in foreign armies. All too often, unfortunately, in the Basque Country itself, organised and subsidised by local sports organisations.

What would it be if all these efforts were focused on organizing and promoting the Basque selections? What if we offered all these young people the opportunity to give them a feeling, an effort and a love for the selection of the Basque Country?

As far as international sport is concerned, I believe that in the next 25 years, we would paralyse the promotion of French and Spanish international sport and, in the last 25 years, in favour of the Basque Country teams, giving half of what we had given to foreign selections, we would make great progress. But as seen in the last 25 years, Basque politicians would be closer to the institutions of power, both French and Spanish, and the selections of Euskal Herria further.

We have to work on national construction in small and large steps and, depending on our responsibility, take steps of the same measure. If we want to avoid the disappearance of Euskal Herria, instead of being entangled in institutions, legislation, regulations and strange visions, we must work towards them, both in sport and in other areas. The Basques have no other way to go, we will work with intractable attitudes towards Spain and France or we will put our people on the path of disappearance.

In the next 25 years, will we continue to feed the international sport of those who have colonized us? Are we going to allocate the resources and efforts we have in your favour? Are we not going to give our athletes the opportunity to internationalize the Basque feeling? Are we not going to put in sufficient means to get those opportunities? Will the opportunity and the way to compete internationally be to compete with foreign armies? Do we put Basque athletes on their way to France and Spain?

Aratz Gallastegi Sodupe