Organized by Emakume Txokoa de Arrasate, AED (Arrasate Euskaldun Dezagun), Emun, Ekin Emakumeak eta Goiena. Round table, 30 October. Over the past three or four years, numerous members of the feminist movement and the Basque culture of Arrasate-Mondragón have been listeners to reflect on an issue that is increasingly being raised.

You can be a feminist without being Basque

Goiena journalist Aitziber Aranburuzabala did not give the boys and girls time to heat the TV. He asked the three speakers directly on the subject of the round table.

For IDURRE Eskisabel, the question is a little naughty. He answered yes to the question, but he added: “I am Euskaltzale because I am a feminist and I am a feminist because I am Euskaltzale.” He remembered what Joxe Arantzabal had written the day before: “Simone de Beauvoir (and several) were feminists and were they Basque?” In the opinion of Eskisabel, for example, of Angela Davis is at least an Euskaltzale of the Basque Country. One of the greatest contributions to feminism has been to work the oppression of race and class beyond sex-gender oppression, and not by chance, he is American, woman and black. Upon reaching our destination, Eskisabel brought to the level of the race a categorization according to the national feeling of culture. In his opinion, the decisive factor is the Basque language which has ups and downs with cultural identity, and that is why he says that Angela Davis is certainly Euskaltzale. According to Davis, it is not the same to be a white, heterosexual, middle-class Euskaldun, a white, heterosexual, Spanish woman working at home, an Basque woman, a lesbian, professional or an African black woman.

In the opinion of Ainhoa Beola, it is clear that you can be a feminist without being Euskaltzale. However, they both think of the fight for fundamental rights, and although communication should exist between them, it surprises them that this is not the case, that there is no collaboration. She set the example of grandma and grandma. Her grandmother was Euskaltzale and she wasn't a feminist. Amatxi, for his part, was a feminist and not a Basque. They didn't understand. In Latin America, feminism and indigenism are very much in agreement, in Africa feminism and environmentalism. He believes that in Euskal Herria everyone is in his strength, although fortunately, we are beginning to overcome this situation. Beola believes that being a feminist, Euskaltzale, ecologist and internationalist has logic.

Lorea Agirre framed the struggles we have here in the framework of social justice, that is, feminism and the normalization of Euskera, and says that it is logical that we start in a struggle and move on from the other. It considers that any struggle against capitalist, patriarchal and monoculture society are sisters.

Agirre says that in the last three or four years we are talking about possible alliances between those struggles, but to show that the issue is not so new he read the poem Dibisa (translated by Itxaro Borda, Susa) of the Catalan poet María Mercè Marçal: “I owe three gifts to the adventure: to have created a woman, a low social class, a country and an oppressed culture, and to have given the opportunity to be three times rebellious.”