Alberto Santana has been presenting in ETB1 "The myth of the Basque matriarchy" for a long time. What Santana said in the program surprised me. How can we say that the Basques have not been matriarched in our history? What is wrong? That we have nothing special, that we are patriarchal? I was wondering what the purpose of this programme is.

Santana's goal is to deny and suppress the original history of the Basques and to tell the story that the colonizers have invented for the Basques as if it were true. We are therefore faced with a perverse game, that is, in the face of a powerful attack by the patriarchal colonizer.

It has to be said that in Europe, in the Paleolithic era, the human group belonged to the maternal group, and the mother's belonging indicates that the group was matrilineal, that the group came from the mother. This belonging to the mother's group structured a matriarchal life. For me, it would be better to say matrilineal.

Fortunately, his footprints appear in the Basque family structure: in the words of neba, sister, aunt, uncle, nephew, mother-in-law, there is the end. This suffix indicates that the kinship of the Basques comes from their mother. Analyzing the etymology of these words, the father is his father-in-law, who comes from the mother, and means that he is his sister's brother. The mother is the mother-in-law who comes from the mother and means she's her brother's sister. Both of them confirm that the Basques have a family structure, matrilineal, that comes from the mother.

Thus, the children's biological father lived in their mother's house, the one who performed the function of father with the children was the uncle, and still my brother has a great presence with the children of his sisters. Living in her mother's house means they lived with her grandmother's siblings and children. Children who were born in all generations would live in this house with their mother's brothers, their mother's sisters and their mother's sisters' sons.

As for the house, the parents inherited their daughter's house. The other clue is the lady in the house, a woman who manages the domestic economy and tells her what she has to do for her to achieve well-being.

In beliefs, Mari is more than a maternal representation. It is what gives life, and the original beliefs of the Basques are the importance of Mari's orders and the prayers that are made to Mari. Mari's lover is Sugar, the sun and the moon that emerged from that relationship, which tells us what the philosophical mindset of the Basques is. We also have rites of passage (rite of birth Basque atsolorra, dance of youth, dance of the girl, dancing of the boys, stela of the months), work and production (auzolan), assembly, neighborhood, etc.

The matrilineal lifestyle created equality between men and women, women and men had the same power, society was egalitarian. And this equality appears in the Basque country: for example, in the words of friend, child, child, lover, we do not distinguish gender.

On the other hand, despite the patriarchal invasions of the Indo-Europeans during the Neolithic, the Basques continued their matrilineal life.

But Pope Alexander, in 1179, ordered a holy war on the European matrilineal peoples to impose patriarchal life. To do so, the Church created the Inquisition and the devil’s theory, and led the persecution to the head against the European matriarchal peoples. In this context, many peoples disappeared and the Basque population declined. Of course, the holy war followed, and in 1515 Pope Julius commissioned the Crown of Castile to conquer Navarre. After the military conquest, the Inquisition made the law accusations of witchcraft to impose patriarchal life. The Church imposed the majority, belonging to the group belonged to the biological father, the subordination of the woman, the authoritarian and violent of the matrilineal men and the Catholic.

Still in the twenty-first century, the Basques are still in the process of colonization. And even though many individuals are infected by patriarchal life, for example, men who lose their house in wagering, or women who function as patriarchal men, the original traces of matriarchy are in effect in our country. The Basques are neither Spanish nor French, we belong to the group of the mother, we have our own characteristics, our mother tongue is the matrilineal Basque, and we are the last matrilineal people in Europe at the beginning.