50 years for the oldest ikastola in Vitoria-Gasteiz, and much more for Andoni Pérez Plaza (Vitoria-Gasteiz, 1926), a living witness who knew as a child the environment that was lived in the capital of Alavesa before the war. “I was seven years old when I entered the ikastola.” Andoni, in fact, uses that name every time he mentions the Basque School of Zapatari Street: ikastola. It was an inevitable initiative of the PNV. “At the ikastola we had Pilar Landaburu.” Andoni started at ikastola in 1933 and although the complete list of the students of the time has not been preserved, a relic with enough information gives us an excellent explanation. “I have a memory for the communion of my brother Josetxu. Your communion in the parish of San Miguel, on July 5, 1936, 15 days before the beginning of the war! Well, in this reminder appear the names of each and every one of the children of the ikastola that that day made the communion. That is the necessary list!”

Ikastola, the Basque School, was taught in Spanish, as in the national schools of the Republic. “In our environment, however, the Jesuit brother Etxebeste gave a class of religion and, unlike the schools of the Republic, we had a cross in our room. We were about 40 students.”

From Heaven it is known that extracurricular activities are the protagonists today, but also then the students looked like this. “At dusk – not every day, but several times a week – at 7 p.m., other activities were carried out at that school: It was called "Euzko Gaztetxu Batza". There we were teaching Euskera, dance, theatre… and so, under the responsibility of several serious people: The sisters Uralde, Julian Agirre, Atorrasagasti, Castresana, Peli Presa, Estibaliz, Maritxu Alava... If there were no young people, we went to the batzoki of the Plaza de los Arcos [Plaza Nueva, or Plaza de España, today].” The atmosphere lasted for three years. Later, neither the ikastola nor Gaztetxu jumped the way of Andoni and the rest of the boys and girls. Franco rebelled in July 1936, when the students were on vacation, and in September next there was neither a ikastola nor a Basque school. It was three years. “War, and back, red secrecy!”, as Andoni Perez Plaza says.

Clandestine

According to Andoni Perez Plaza, the first action on Euskera known in Vitoria-Gasteiz after the war came from the hand of Andoni Urrestarazu, president of Umandi. PEREZ Plaza has written in the Bidegileak collection, and Urrestarazu was imprisoned in Santander – for two years – and in Larrinaga. Afterwards, he made a stay in Donostia-San Sebastián. “Finally, he returned to Vitoria and from there began what his life work would be: the teaching of the Basque Country (…) Let us remember, for a moment, what would be that Vitoria of 1942 that Umandi found when he left prison.

Looking little at the environment, it was at that moment that he began teaching Euskera at home to those who approached.” At the age of sixteen, Pérez Plaza joined them with other friends.

Pedro Anitua, Ramón Narbaiza

You know what a witness told you that, at the age of 80, he wants to hide his name in the face of doubts that things are going to be wrong. He was a student of Andoni Urrestarazu and lived first hand the atmosphere of that time. Moreover, this hidden link in our history is a missing link. He started at the Diocesan School of the Diocese in 1945, on Arana Street, at the age of fourteen. The school was promoted by the priest Pedro Anitua, Eibarrés de Anitua, who intended to make the School of Arms there, giving the opportunity to young people of working age to learn a trade. The anitua had Soraluze's plentxi: Ramón Narbaiza, who was where he was supposed to, although he was a little amateur to appear, always preferred in the shadow. The seminar in Vitoria-Gasteiz was filled with young seminarians from Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa at that time, and certainly more than one who worked to awaken the Basque consciousness. At that time, “Anitua and Narbaiza formed a great tandem,” says José Antonio.

Our correspondent studied mechanic at the School of Studies. The school opened in 1942 and witnessed the third promotion. In the same school were, for example, Obdulio López de Lacalle, Anjel Aranzabal, José Antonio Arriola, Peli Martín and others. And within those studies, the schools of religion and the tornos of one and the other. At the same time, the Diocese received a donation from Villa Nieves Cano Street for teaching by the Church. There they opened a school for girls, in order to train themselves in clothing and administration. Don Ramón Narbaiza met Terese Urrestarazu, sister of Umandi, for having studied teaching. This link would be strengthened years later.

Andoni Urrestarazu ‘Umandi’

As we know, Don Ramón Narbaiza not only taught religion. He organized or participated in exits to the mountain. Mass was also celebrated in the peaks of the mountains, often. In these mountains were joined the learned boys from Arana Street and the girls from the Villa Nieves. In this environment, Don Ramón Narbaiza encouraged them to learn Euskera. In fact, in 1951 Andoni Urrestarazu was in Umandi, in the house of Calle San Antonio de Vitoria-Gasteiz, opposite the railway line. In those schools in Euskera, soon our anonymous correspondent was going to be ours. It retains the letter that Andoni Urrestarazu received from the exile of Paris in 1953; it also keeps the notes of pages that the professor used to distribute, and along with them, the grammar composed by Urrestarazu, Euskal-Eliztia (written in Basque), the 1955 edition. He who cured her in Paris. In fact, the repression that followed the two-day strike of 1951 was a severe blow to the PNV network in Vitoria-Gasteiz, and Umandi, and the rest of his colleagues, did not go well. Umandi was first held in prison at La Paz Street and was subsequently incarcerated 100 kilometres from the Alavesa capital. After touring Huesca and Pamplona, he crossed Hondarribia and Hendaya on the low tide of the Bidasoa, and after a short stay in the Northern Basque Country he went to Paris. “One day, as always, we went to Andoni School in Basque, and no one received us more than his sister. He told us that Andoni had left. Three people, all of them from the PNV, fled. A few days later, when they arrived healthy to the North and made him known at home, we also realized what it meant to ‘go outside’.” They are the words of our witness. Years later, the historic Euskaltzale of Vitoria-Gasteiz Peli Martín wrote that the Basque classes of Andoni Urrestarazu were essential for those young people from the capital of Alavesa to become “aware” of the “Basque conscience”. Among the students of Urrestarazu were, together with our witness, Obdulio López de Lacalle, Anjel Aranzabal, Peli Martín, José Antonio Arriola… that is, those young people who have studied in the Diocesan School at the hand of Don Ramón Narbaiza.

Ramiro Maeztu Institute

In the exile of Umandi, but on fire, in 1957 they would begin to teach Euskera classes in Vitoria-Gasteiz, at the Ramiro Institute of Maeztu, building of the current parliament. The Basque Institute of Philology and Studies, Ramiro de Maeztu, was organized with great solemnity. They were sponsored by the Territorial Delegation of Education and Culture of Álava, and also organized several conferences with Joxemiel Barandiaran, Koldo Mitxelena, Arrue, Juan Gorostiaga… as speakers. A year later, in 1958, the first spiritual activities in Basque in Vitoria, in the church of San Antonio; in Begiradorata, by no means.

Peli Martín wrote that they went to the City Hall to request the creation of Basque classes at the institute. For his part, the Mayor informed the Civil Governor that yes, but that the City Hall did not have the power to authorize an initiative of this nature, but that it was the Territorial Delegation of Education that had the competence. The governor, of course, appointed and set up his rope director in those Basque classes. According to Peli Martín, a little brazen and with a lot of determination, “we believed it was time to take the Basque classes out of the underground. Open the registration and answer: There were 244 people registered in the first year, in 1957!”

In 1959, one more step: on 15 March, on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the birth of Raimundo Olabide, the Euskaltzales of then organized a tribute in the Main Theatre of the city, in contact with Euskaltzaindia and under the patronage of the Provincial Council of Álava and the City Hall of Vitoria-Gasteiz.

In 1962 it had to be suspended by the Institute of Philology and Basque Studies Ramiro de Maeztu. In that year, the Territorial Commission of the Movement intended to take the Basque classes out of this institute and take them to the Central Office of the Movement. No one was content with that move. For starters, no one had ever signed up. “Thus the Institute of Basque Philology and Studies was dissolved, and with it the groups of students who tried to learn Basque in our city,” in the writings of Peli Martín. However, it was not the end. The people tried it, until the Basque classes resumed at the Jesús Obrero school. They will then be held at the School of Arts and Crafts.

Married single

That being the environment, how did the first ikastola of Vitoria, which this year turns 50, emerge in any detail? The anonymous witness has the key: "Well, what would it be! In 1945 we were at the School of Apprentices, single young people, married in 1960 and with three or four years of children! By then, we were Abertzales, we were nationalists, we had feelings, and when Peli Martin came to ask us if we were going to school the children in Euskera, we said yes.”

And so, on December 4, 1963, and the day or the next month, climbing the stairs of the house of the first andereño that was in the post-war period in Vitoria-Gasteiz – Zerkabarren 9 street, fourth floor door to the left – the parents who brought the children sowed the seed of Olabide Ikastola. They were children Itziar Lopez de Lacalle, Arantza Aranzabal, Iñaki Arriola, Pedro Ignazio Elosegi… and the eldest son of Izaskun Arrue, Rafael Pikatoste, among others. Itziar… Arantza… Iñaki… At the Diocese School with Don Ramón Narbaiza, and with him on the mountain, and influenced by Andoni Urrestarazu, sons and daughters of girls and boys fathers and mothers of Umandi.

This Ikastola Olabide was erected on the stone that was laid before the war. 50 years, but, to be honest, a lot more.