The train that connects Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port with Bayonne is coming, between the stings and the clasps of the iron cargo. For a moment that seems long to me, Marceline Harispuru covers the words of the mothers of the Mulienian Sea. For Marceline's voice had taken me back in time: Just in the middle of the 20th century. By that time the Robi River’s slope was well acquainted with the winding railway that survives today. The transit of the workers on the train, the crossing of the here and there. The small farm of Mulienia also looked at this movement from the margins of the railway. “We were going to Latsa High School. Even after the wedding, I've always lived in this house with my parents. We're going to be Sabantas!" Beneath the humor and the apex of enthusiasm, those that can be manifested by a single subtle outburst are enormous. Marceline, like most Basque growers of her age, underestimates herself with a lack of knowledge. It can't be any other way. The ideology of “enlightenment” or “sabanten” is centuries old. Farmers, here's the flock of dirt and grime. If, in addition to being a peasant, they spoke the language of the place, then Victor Hugo himself would align himself with the offenders. “To speak a dead language is to have a tomb in thought,” he would publish, among other things, in his book Quatre-vingt-treize.

“I learned Spanish at home,” Marceline continues gently. We have always spoken Russian. When we went to school, we started learning French. You weren't talking Basque. If not, they would give us a piece of Bâton Basque wood. In the mornings the Riense gave someone that piece of wood and then issued as much as possible as soon as the school was finished. If not, it was his puni in there. At school the boys were involved with the girls, and as the boys were faster, they passed it on to

the girls.” I represent Marceline's children's hands in the broom driver, thinking about the reason for the punishment given... just as well as enduring other children's truffles... “No, the other kids weren’t bad. I don’t remember being miserable.” Then – although I know it might be impossible – I can’t help but wonder: “And you have never abandoned that stick somewhere, have you ever hidden it?”

Three generations in the school of Latsa

Like the spill of the Robi, in Mulienia life proceeded smoothly. Marceline was married and two decades earlier, like her, her children began at Latsa’s school. “I also studied French there,” says Marie-Claude Aguerre, Marceline’s youngest daughter. “But I don’t remember meeting any of the sticks my mother was talking about. Since I had started a little French with my older brothers, I don’t remember any

particular difficulties.” “In our time, the Basque was a little French,” says Mulienia’s oldest housekeeper. Most of our young friends spoke Basque. Even the village spoke Basque. There was a bit of French in the square. Especially in the young people there. And then, because they were customs officers and cops, we were talking to them. When Gerla arrived, we met many French people. We didn’t know French.” The modesty or shame, and the fear of not finding a job, plagued the Basques. To work in Kanbo, Marceline also had to be hired.

“In our time,” continues his daughter Marie-Claude, “French was a mandatory language for work. It wasn’t as good a job as it is now.” Marie-Claude began working in the mail in sixteen years and has recently retired there. “For a moment, the management of the post office told us to make Basque for customers who wanted it. Then I was in the capital, and there was no Basque spoken there, where there were no people from the other side. When I went back to the mountain houses of the sea, people knew I spoke Basque, so we did. But further away from his homeland, no. I don’t have much to do with English.” In the wings of Mundarro and

Artzamendi, refreshed by Errobi and with the south wind flowered by the cherry blossom, it is easy to think of the Basque village of the Mar in the second half of the 20th century. Although this is too fast to forget, in 1882 the French State put in place free and secular preventive education. For Marie-Claude Aguerre, the direct consequence of this was the disappearance of the Basque language from public life. “Even though we knew Basque in our youth, we didn’t use it in our friends. Because once we started in school, we spoke French. We used to speak French with the Marines. How and with whom it happened, but it was and is.” If the flow of the Basque language was not exhausted, it was domesticated. The daughter of Michèle Aguerre Marie-Claude, thirty years old, was soaked in Mulienia as a child, who would later be robbed by the school: My mother tongue was Basque until I went to school. Like Mum and Mum, I went to Latsa High School. Since I didn’t know any French at the beginning, I was an ordinary loser. The French prevailed little by little, even in Mulienia, but when we did our homework, when we learned to read, the school introduced us to the French language at home. We didn’t know how to take care of the Basque language well learned with our parents. We were caught and unwittingly outnumbered by the French. That’s why we didn’t even realize it.” For Marceline

Harispuru, Michèle's mother, there is no doubt. The flood of water that was destined to strangle the Basque language began to rise silently: “Speaking French became fashionable, it was Urguilu. People felt that way a little more; someone else. The Basques themselves have probably allowed the Basque language to escape. I didn’t think we were going to make a fool of ourselves.” And Marceline, when asked whether this loss did not make them uneasy in heart, confirmed her daughter's instincts: “No, then no. We weren't even remotely aware. We never thought it would be possible to lose.”

The mourning of the lost

Marie-Claude Aguerre is doing: Naturally, the first language we speak to children is Basque. My kids didn’t know French when they went to school. But then we were slipping to the edge. In those years, the political proclamation of the Basque language was born, and today the Basque language has a different value. Now we’re talking about sativa and sativa.” How did the people

of the Sea experience the politicized movement around the Basque language that emerged in the Northern Basque Country in the turn of the 1970s? And the Mulienis? The first word that comes to Marie-Claude’s mind is “fear.” “We were afraid of him first. Because we did not realize that the Basque language could be lost. All of a sudden, we were horrified to see Basque linked to a movement that used violence.” Because the simple problem is not explained, his daughter Michèle adds: “In those years the words ‘patriot’ were shown by people building schools and blowing up domestic agencies. It was all one and that made him afraid.”

More specifically, fear of what? He may have been considered a “terrorist” for speaking Basque. “No, no,” says Marie-Claude Aguer, holding the bull by the horns. We were afraid that the terrorists were Basques. And of mixing all the ideas, of being taken as evildoers. The damage that the actions of the North did not do next door... That wasn’t seen well...” Again, the daughter completes her mother's thought: “For example, Itsasun, GAL killed some people. Well, the people of the village did not make a distinction between the actions of the LAG and those of the North. They interpreted that a Basque had killed people and they could not accept it. You know, you're scared of people you don't know and you don't try to understand them more closely. It was a taboo...” And finally, the mother rounded off her daughter’s explanation: “In those times the work of those politicized Basques was not properly received by the many, and I was the first, because we were not interested in it. Later on, we did. Let's look at it in the family, with the people closest to us explaining the incident of the problem. The Mulienians did not send the children to the school because we had the school away from home. But even if we were close, I don’t know what we would have decided...” The slow summer

water of the Robi River would have contributed to the flowering of the seed sown in Mulienia. In fact, going to the public school of Cambo, where the young Michèle began to review the Basque language. “It was thanks to the friends of the school. I had an understanding of English, but lost my speech. I started talking to a friend again. He was directing me.” Even if he could not continue a long conversation with his father's mother, who didn't know French, at least he understood. And Michèle Aguerre was also struck by a fever that shocked more than a young Basque native from the Northern Basque Country: “We started going to Euskal Herria Sur with our friends because we had the hango as a reference. In the culture, its dynamism and richness attracted many of our generation, making Basque interesting by the way.” Today, Michèle not only speaks Basque, but also teaches at the Naval Night School of the AEK. However, the thorn stings on him, because “although I know Basque today, I mourn at home, losing the Basque language of the Sea. When I listen to my parents, I can only see how much the Basque language has lost between their two generations, especially in the dictionary.”

Number of speakers by balance

Marie-Claude Aguerre, daughter of Mulienia de la Itsasu, believes that people want to return to the Basque language: “If today’s parents have attachment. Unlike in our time, when we had Basque, we didn’t do anything to keep it.” It is true that the children of the Basque Country in the North are making it easier and easier for them to learn Basque in school. “What’s more,” says Marie-Claude, “was the previously underestimated Basque language. It’s not like I’m in the middle of something like that, because I’m working on something like that.” For his daughter, Michèle Aguerre, “it has happened to many people that Basque can be learned. Seeing that they are multiple in these cases makes it easier for them to make the move. But at night schools there are still more outsiders than here. It’s just a weight loss.” In fact,

syllogism says that Basque makes us Basque, that Basque gives us identity. The loss of English leads to the loss of identity. “That’s it,” Michèle says without hesitation. Some people realize that. Others not yet. I'm sorry about that. Because people don’t realize the danger of losing Basque: undermining all the values we have, questioning the whole culture.” Reflecting on her grandmother Marceline, she responds seriously that she does not think it is possible to be Basque without knowing Basque. “Where it hasn’t been created here, going somewhere and back to Jinika,” says Marie-Claude Aguer.
Looking ahead, Marie-Claude Aguerre is optimistic. We know what should be done to maintain the Basque language in the Northern Basque Country: “It is true that surveys show that more Basque speakers die than is generated. We haven't detected any balance yet. But if we continue the work of transmission in the teaching of both children and adults, we can make the balance worse.” And Michèle agrees that her mother says that in this task the houses of the town and other public administrations have a lot to say. “You have to create the need to use Basque everywhere so that people notice what is wrong without learning it. It is necessary to seek a balance between the dynamics of associations and the economic demand of the public authorities, insisting that the strength of the people is the most important, without which we would not be in today’s situation. We will die in our power without the help of the public authorities.” However, Marceline is the most optimistic of the three wives: “If I had a dream for Basque, I could at least ask him to go as he is now. So that you don't lose everything normal. I don't have a prescription for that! I also speak French.” And he laughs, sweetly. “But it is a pleasure to see that even small children continue to learn. Speaking at home. There’s a lot going on in the mountains that I know.” In Mulienia

the sun also seems to laugh at them. At the moment of greeting, at the end of the conversation, some notes that carry the intimate weight of the language take off. That Alabama can not speak Basque with her parents, because the plague of the Basque language has made the relationship a line. The daughter, on the other hand, cannot speak French to her father in the manner which she usually does to her mother, for how she might have corrected herself: Saying “you”? or using the respectful distance marker “vous”?

The train to Bayonne is leaving. It occurs to me that his iron stings and clicks are the bitter cranks of the Basque language. Then I appreciate the Robi River, because its spill gives me security. Its flow rate is sweet, constant. The Basque language of the Northern Basque Country may also be halatsu...