In June of last year, three students from the Igartza Motorschool in Beasain (Gipuzkoa) wanted to do a practical exam in Basque to get their driver’s license, but in the end they had to do it in Spanish. “We have to warn the Traffic Department about a week in advance of which students we will send to the exam,” explains Joxe Luis Iturriotz, the owner of the motorschool, “and I told the Department that in the case of these three, they would do it in Basque.”

On the same day of the exam, a coordinator of examiners showed up and told them that the only option was to take the exam in Spanish or go home. In light of the incident, Iturrioz forwarded the complaint to the Department of Traffic of Gipuzkoa. “They told me that the jurisdiction was not in their hands and that they would send my complaint to Madrid, they did not give me another answer.”

At the same time, the owner of Igarza contacted the Observatory of Linguistic Rights to ask what the law says about the matter. The Observatory replied that the legislation governing traffic does not contain anything specific about languages, and that more general rules should therefore be used. In this case, the law. Citizens have the right to carry out a practical examination of the driving licence in the official language of their choice.

This right is clearly not guaranteed. “There is only one Basque examiner in Gipuzkoa,” says Joxe Luis Iturriot, “but he is freed for union work. There is another one that is adapted in some way to the Basque language, but in any case, the study in the Basque language depends on the will of the examiner; there is no real guarantee of the right.”

At the initiative of Igartza, several members of the Professional Association of Driving Schools of the Goierri have prepared a letter with the intention of sending it to the Traffic Directorate of the country after collecting signatures in driving schools throughout Gipuzkoa. They demand that in order to be able to carry out the practical study in Basque, which can already be done theoretically, mechanisms be put in place.

In Bizkaia, re-lose what you’ve achieved

At the moment, the situation in Gipuzkoa is the same as in all Basque territories, but there is an important nuance: unlike others, in recent years in Bizkaia it has been possible to carry out a practical study in Basque until recently. Although he does not remember the exact dates, Unai Zuluaga, head of the Arratia de Igor motorschool, tells us that this has been the case for at least a decade. He knows something about it: it is mainly because of his initiative that he has had the opportunity to carry out the study in Basque.

“We started in this history with a Duranguesado auto-school,” recalls Zuluaga, “that was a great auto-school and sent some students with the notice that they would take the exam in Basque. The director put the translator in the car. Imagine the situation:‘to the left’ examiners, ‘to the left’ translators. It was illogical.”

Zuluaga was unwilling to accept it and pressured to remove the translator system. Even get it. “I told them that none of my students would go to take the exam like this, that we are all bilingual and that we also understand Spanish, we know that the left is left-handed, but in an exam like this one you are nervous and you will get better if you speak in the language of origin.” Finally, the translators were removed shortly after being placed, Zuluaga is again disappointed in his memory but believes that he did not last more than a couple of years. It was the late '90s.

Shortly afterwards, the Arratia Motorschool finally managed to install Basque examiners in Bizkaia. The Traffic Department sent three examiners to the Basque language and they learned, in the words of Zuluaga, at least enough Basque to take the exam.

For reasons that we will soon explain, in Bizkaia many students have not asked to take the practical exam in Basque, but those who have asked for it have had this option guaranteed for the last decade or so. Since January of this year, however, the situation has returned to the previous one, that of any other Basque territory: erdaraz or home. Unai Zuluaga explains that the examiners who have taken the exams in Basque have decided not to do more, as long as the administration does not recognize them for this work. “The fact is that they have been doing this work voluntarily and have not seen any compensation from the Spanish administration.” In order to know their demands in more detail, we tried to put them in contact with the scholars, but for the moment they decided not to talk to the media.

In the meantime, Unai Zuluaga has sent a request to the Bizkaia Traffic Office to ensure that the study can be carried out in Basque, but does not expect a quick response: “As when we managed to put in Basque examiners for the first time, we will have to start the fight between Dabid and Goliath. What's going to happen? - I don't know. Maybe they’ll put the reporters back in.”

In this case, the pressure will not only reach the Traffic Directorates of the Basque Autonomous Community from the motorschools. The Vice-Ministry of Language Policy of the Basque Government also intends to sign an agreement with them to guarantee the right to carry out a practical study of the driving licence in Basque in Álava, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa.

Lack of learning materials for a long time

Despite having the opportunity to do so, in Bizkaia, for many years very few students have carried out a practical study in Basque (the same can be said of theory). Most of them, no matter what, from the Arratia Auto School. The Igartza motorschool in Beasain, which we mentioned earlier, made the request last year, even though almost all the students were Basque. The reason is simple: until recently, to extract the driver’s license, all the learning had to be done in Basque, since there was no material in Basque. It does not seem logical that the whole process is carried out in Spanish and then the exams are carried out in Basque.

The exception has also been the Arratia Self-School, thanks to the will of Unai Zuluaga. The possibility of carrying out theoretical studies in Basque has existed throughout the EAE since 1995, but due to the lack of learning materials, in that same year Zuluaga began to prepare it on his own. Since a few years later he also managed to have the practical exam in Basque, the entire learning process, from start to finish, has been carried out in Basque by the students of the Arratia Motorschool. “We’re talking about 70%.”

This was the case for several years, until the Mancomunidad de Debagoien, first, and a Valencian publisher called AEOL, later, knowing the work of Zulugua, became involved. Finally, thanks to the collaboration of the three parties, AEOL has published in Basque the learning material for the extraction of the driver’s license, largely taking advantage of what Zuluaga has done. Joxe Luis Iturrioz reminded us, however, that the material used to extract specific authorizations is still not in Basque.

For the past two years, this material has been available to all UAE car schools, and many offer it. However, the students’ desire varies greatly from region to region: At a school in Sopela we have been told that so far only one person has asked for their driver’s license to be issued in Basque. In semi-rural areas such as Uribe Kosta, Spanish is still preferred by the Basques themselves.