Where did Unamuno get the ideas expressed in his talk at the Floral Games held in Bilbao in 1901? That is, that the Basque language is not useful in the modern world, that the Bilbao that speaks Euskera is incongruous and absurd, that the Basque language cannot express the spirit of the Basques as it is, that the Basque language is reduced because the Basque language is useless for modern life and that it must be left aside to advance, that it is best to die as soon as possible and that it must be helped to die immediately. The Basque Country had to support Castile and Spain and America, impregnate with its spirit and fertilize it, but, of course, in Spanish. It was a tremendous scandal in Bilbao and throughout Euskal Herria. Where did he get those ideas from?

The answers are in Joxe Azurmendi's latest book: History of thought in the Basque Country. From 19th-century Renan to Unamuno there is a chain of writers and naturalists: A. Hovelacque, etc., mainly J. Vinson is, from whom Unamuno took the ideas that sadly made famous for the Basques, and which throughout the twentieth century led many Basque writers to realize a theoretical-practical defense of the Basque: Arana Goiri, Orixe, Lizardi, Lauaxeta, Zaitegi, Ibinagabeitia, Salbatore Mitxelena, Koldo Mitxelena, Martin Ugalde, and Gabriel Aresti have been fighting with Unamuno since then.

Renan stated that non-Indo-European languages and races were primitive and insignificant, quite rightly excluded from the history of the spirit and “without history”. Not the most powerful, removed from the arms and rejected by the imposition of theirs, but those rooted in their very nature, because they were useless, because they did not serve for development. The Basque Country is also not Indo-European, so it is primitive and insignificant to express a modern life. And -- look at that -- it's not able to develop on its own, nor to develop anything from the outside. Marching and dying is your destiny.

Vinson (1843-1926) believes that the Basque Country is completely primitive (in a negative sense), without its own civilization, with peoples always more advanced next door, and culturally totally Spanish debtors and French gas heels. Their vocabulary is very poor, incapable of expressing abstract ideas: if we take away the words we lend to the gas, to French, to Spanish and to Latin, it shows no sign of advanced civilizations.

Thanks to relations with the Indo-European races, we who speak in Basque have come to have a historical life, and the Basque country has no practical interest, has no cultural value and no public utility. They are Basque: “a peuple illettré qui ne peut se mettre au niveau ses voisins qu’en oubliant son antique langage” What we cannot forget about the Basque Country is to equate it to the villages of the neighborhoods. And Basque excerpts, folklore, legends, mythology and history have nothing original either. Only the language is the original, and that will soon disappear or disappear.

For all these reasons, it was convenient to study the Basque language thoroughly, before dying, because besides the fact that the neighboring languages are much stronger, the Basque country did not have the force of life in itself to survive and, therefore, rather than mourning the death of the Basque was a source of joy, because this was how they gained progress and civilization.

He has already realized where Unamuno drank and where he fed in Bilbao, his hometown, to say the things he delivered in his 1901 speech. In racist ideas, as we have already said, even if it is not a biological racist.

The naturalist school considered that by combining language and race, that is, linguistics and evolutionary biology, it eventually cultivated linguistics in solid bases and methods, the Parisian science that captivated the young Unamuno, but that linguistics was quickly forgotten.

What is surprising or embarrassing is that with the racist discourse of Unamuno the liberal bourgeoisies of Bilbao are excited and proud, and then those ideas are fully disseminated among the Spanish intellectuals and journalists (Ortega y Gasset, etc. ). ). The ideas of Unamuno have had and have a long shadow over nothing and the need to marginalize the Basque country. It is good to know that they are heirs to a type of racism, and that we are acting against it when we work in the theoretical and practical defense of the Basque Country!