The program is produced by Orio Produkzioak and has a team of seven people who are forced to get involved. Seventeen sessions have already been given. Kike Amonarriz is the director and host of the program. Amonarriz has always worked on the Basque language, especially from the point of view of the sociolinguistics, and I was eager to do the television programme on which he worked. His challenge was to convey his passion to the viewers in an informative, interesting and attractive way. Convey passion, feeling, and not content, information. Amonarriz deduced from the multitude of conferences and contacts he had with the people, “I think we know very little about the resources, the colors, the riches that the Basque country has. We have a rich situation, there are very interesting people around the Basque country, but many times we don’t know.” And the topics come from the hand of ignorance. From the first session, the words of the Tribe began to turn prejudices upside down.

Why do we think we're so small?

The first session was the size of the Basque Country. Tribuaren Berbak’s team wanted to hit the premiere, preparing messages that could cast doubt on some of the social convictions that were carried out. In the game with citizenship in the street survey, it was found that the Basques and the Basques believe that we are something smaller than larger. On a scale from 0 to 10, according to the number of speakers, they asked what place we occupy in the world and all the citizens who went through the street gave figures below 3. With almost a million speakers, the Vasco-speaking community is actually ranked ninth. Thus, for example, the interview with Madrid Carlos Cid has been cited by many people, who have been surprised by the level of Basque that the one who lives and works in Madrid has. In that first session, they explained that the Vasco-speaking community is not limited to the Basque Country. Amonarriz says: “The first program provoked a reaction and got people to wonder why we see ourselves but not so small. I think we put enough materials to question some hyper-negative speeches about language.”

Tribuaren Berbak is not a product designed for militant Euskaltzales, but aims at any ETB1 spectator who sits quietly in the chair. Whoever is able to understand the Basque, and as Amonarriz says, “for anyone who knows little about the Basque but is sympathetic to the Basque”. That is why the challenge is to produce a pleasant, dynamic and informative product, which can be seen in prime time. It was also necessary to give a positive view. They wanted to get away from the protest, from the cry, from the complaint about the Basque country, and they showed a different kind of mentality. However, there is a risk of showing too beautiful a vision: “That does not mean that we have to give an innocent, positivist, unreal vision, I think what we are showing is reality, we see weaknesses, deficiencies, impossibilities, but we above all want to convey the positive tone.”

The tribe of the program is made up of Basque experts and citizens in general. The former exposes concrete knowledge of language and citizenship reflects the social reality with respect to these themes. They take into account criteria as diverse as territoriality, gender, age and remoteness of people on the subject.

When people have suddenly been surprised by the street survey, they have had a good answer, even among Castilian speakers they have had an open and broad attitude. Another is whether they have received the expected responses in the street polls. In Madrid and Barcelona, the citizens were asked how many names of words or phrases they knew in Basque and Spanish. In Biarritz, they took to the streets to test the number of people they knew Euskera they were going to find. On another occasion they were also included in the joke, not knowing in what language they were going to be. Another nice game was the math exercise. The exercise was taught and the residents of Bera were asked to read it out loud. The young people planned to read in Basque, the adults in Spanish, and they were not clear in what language the response of the elderly in the middle would translate. Amonarriz has called those games to the sociology of the pocket.

How can we make Euskera attractive on television?

You have to take your ideas to the screen. A half-sleepy spectator at night cannot be required to make any special effort, it cannot be demanded a lot of data and reflections on the situation of the Basque Country. They have worked very carefully on how to bring the information to the screen and the filmmaker Xabier Zapirain has given us some examples. Instead of looking at a data table on the screen, we've seen water-filled boats at different levels, or by explaining the situation of the Basque people in Iparralde, we've been drawn with "tassels" and "anticyclones" through the map of time. For Zapirain, “we have to strike a balance between the data and the visual aspect, because if we go to the data it will take us away from some viewers, and we prefer to offer less data and reach more people.”

In ETB2 when?

There is no doubt that there is a program for Euskaldunes, but the words of the tribe are also for Castilian speakers. Amonarriz, for his part, has been convinced that the programme being carried out does not have subtitles or folds to issue them in ETB2. Of course it is worth making such a product, but otherwise. In Amonarriz's view, the main ideas to be conveyed to Castilian speakers should be given concrete form. “It’s not the same to talk about Basque music to Euskaldunes as to the Castilian parishioners; if you have to talk about the duties incumbent on parents, you have to give very different messages to the Basque parents and the Castilian parenting fathers.”