He negotiated with foreign governments the freedom of the Basque Country, was a mojón, smuggler and worked in many other jobs. The ALEA FM program has released the documentary that will be presented on the 23rd day at the Casa del Euskera, Oihaneder, among others.

What struck you to follow Lezo Urreiztieta?

I think everything is special in Lezo. After hearing it, it quickly attracts attention, not just me. Lezo was a sailor, abertzale, utopian, idealistic, heterodox. And at the same time, the smuggler, the pirate -- we could say a lot of things. He saved hundreds of people from south to north in times of repression, brought weapons to the Basque gudaris of smuggling during the war of different countries of Europe, tried attacks to kill Franco, collaborated with the French resistance, had plans to liberate Euskal Herria… How not to draw attention, no?

Where did you start to create the documentary?

The documentary is narrated through Lezo's voice. The documentary is based on a series of interviews that Martin Ugalde conducted in the 1970s and which are now projected in the documentary. It is Lezo himself, when he was old, who tells his life from top to bottom, among them those we have mentioned and many more. I left those tapes.

How did you find out about it?

I was quoted by people I met, but there wasn't much around it. I found out that Martin Ugalde had done those interviews to him, and I started looking for those tapes. When I found them, I immediately saw that there was a terrible story to tell and that you had to be a documentary, just because of that, because Lezo could tell and it was very attractive. Lezo also has a good way of talking, you see that he is a person with a lot of personality, with a lot of charisma and I think he takes the spectators of his hand throughout the movie. Lezo's voice is at the heart of the documentary, next to a "second" choir: Family, historians, friends of Lezo and many more. They enrich, detail or contextualize the words of Lezo Urreiztieta.

In the previous documentary you worked on 'In search of our place of origin'. What work have you had this time to look for those tapes?

They were at the Andoain City Hall. They were in the cartons; I was the first to listen to those people since they were recorded, because nobody asked until now. When I knew where they were, there has been no problem, Martin Ugalde's family and the City Hall offered me all the ease. Luckily, they were in good condition, digitized, taken home, and from that moment on, I took all of that and threw myself into a thread.

Why has such a character been unknown so far?

It's hard to answer. From the moment I met her, I joined her, and that question would have to be answered by those who have kept her in oblivion. We know several characters from the civil war, but Lezo did not get into the sack of those who had to remember. And I would hypothesize that Lezo was a free, even very free man, and that no party or political movement could fully reclaim his memory. In our people, history has become a little manichean, good and bad, we and ours are one of the most repeated cries and so things have been done. Lezo is not included in these schemes. Lezo already had his ideas, he was an enthusiastic independentist, a militant too exaggerated, but that did not stop him from helping many people; he had a better relationship with Indalecio Prieto than with José Antonio Agirre, and the socialists, the communists, the ETA people accompanied them in their different stages of life. And maybe that, that heterodoxy, or that free being, has left at least so far the issue of memory.

Apparently, he had the dream of buying an island in the Pacific, where the Basques dreamed of traveling to the island.

It was more than a dream, because he did a lot of things to take him to the head; he also met with Lázaro Cárdenas, people from the Mexican government. And that seems crazy today, but you have to put it in context; at the time Lezo thought about it, the Jews did something similar. If he was something, I think he was a Gudari for the freedom of Euskal Herria, an independentist to the heart, and when he came to the conclusion at one point, it was very difficult to achieve independence between Spain and France, he began to look for other alternatives.

This news was published by Arabako Aleak and we brought it to ARGIA thanks to the CC-by-sa license.