We sing the old copla: “This is the farewell / this is the farewell / sad of this farewell / aita eta agur anai arrebea / agur anai arrebea /hau da despididea”. You will stop telling jokes in the Light.

I don't know if it's a greeting, but at least a pause. I felt tired, and I thought that after thirty-four years it was time to make the cut. You can never tell if it will be forever. A little bit of tiredness, that's it.

We have also seen the cover of the news item Txorakikeriak: It's Mona Lisa, but it shows your face and your smile!

It's come out of a bad joke. From the A-mo-na-ri I'll say a Mona Lisa with my face. I think it reflects the content of the book, it is the result of years of work of compilation, adaptation and adaptation. The smile, in this case, shows more what's inside than a careless one. The humor here is critical, reflexive… And on the other hand, I have tried to laugh at myself: many characters are tolosarras, many men, quite material about the Basque Country, not a few jokes about politics, that make you think.

You are a graduate in Basque philology, sociolinguistics, television presenter… What kind of humor do you have in your professional work, especially in the sociolinguistics?

One of the main functions of language is the playful function, and if sociolinguistics doesn't take that function into account, we're wrong. Language, in itself, is to communicate, to build a people, to compact a community, and for this purpose, humor, lucidity, the attractiveness of the same language, its usefulness, its wealth is essential. Language is also a tool for working humor. The richer, the more demanding, the more popular, the more likely we are to have an all-powerful humor. That's what I started to remember in the joke dinners. His goal was socio-linguistic. Then Txiskola came to ETB, and his goal was, above all, socio-linguistic. And also in the talks about sociolinguistics, humor has been instrumental in conveying messages to me. In addition, humor is essential to work on juvenile language. Humor has opened many doors to me and has also clarified some of the directions of socio-linguistic activity.

Humor, sociolinguistics, television…

Because I see it all tied! One of my obsessions has been how to get positions disseminated in favour of language. Capture, attract, capture readers, speakers. How to get our speeches, our products to the fullest possible extent. I've always come around. I remember that once we created the association to reeuskaldunize Tolosaldea in the 1980s, our question was: “What will we do to attract people?” The bertsos festivals would bring people together, and the talks would also, but we needed something else, and so we organized the joke dinners, which were already starting to be held in Iparralde. And it's a success! In the jokes I saw people happy, laughing, enjoying the language, believing that the jokes could be counted in Basque… That has been the way.

The path that follows the word of the tribe until the session…

That's where I am. When I started the program, I had a goal to show how our tribe is working, how far it's coming, what's multiple, how interesting, how many things are inside our tribe. Many times we forget how our tribe is! We have been told over and over again that we are small, weak, that ours is useless… Until we have believed ourselves! Well, we are not that big, we know how we are, our situation is weak, we come from the danger of almost disappear… All of that we know, but by doing the words of the Tribe, I want to add a different perspective: “That doesn’t help us to move forward. To move forward, we need another point of view, other kinds of attitudes and moods.” To the interviewees of the tribe, I always say this: “The reality is everything, and we have to tell, be raw or sweet; say how we do it, good or bad; if we go better or worse. But in the end, we need a lincho. We have to move forward!” Someone said: “It’s an optimistic program.” "Wait! The programme does not make a positive reading of the situation, but, whatever the situation, the attitude is positive and so the parties win!” We wanted to convey that, and that is a spirit of humor!

How many peoples our tribes! In addition to the usual places, there are also tribe in which they do not usually appear on television: Tudela, Labarca Fog, Tafalla…

In Mihiluze we also had that concern: we are in the Basque Country. Nobody can know where our programme is made, from where we start, from Bilbao, from Pamplona or from Baiona. We have the focus on Euskal Herria, it is not a program that is done looking at Gipuzkoa, no: It's made from Euskal Herria looking at Euskal Herria. That's the diversity of our tribe. Because we move in the territory of the tribe, in the Basque Country, but not only in the Basque Country. Both by Skype and by van, we approached the tribe: In Montevideo we have been with Carlos Costa, who has learned from Suletino, we have talked with Carlos Cid in Madrid… They are tribukides, although not Basque, like the Basques of Barcelona. Also in the tribe will be the Greek María Spandini and the Colombian José Miguel Ramírez. However, for the tribe to remain alive, it needs Euskal Herria, that is its geographic space, and in addition, in the Basque Country itself it needs a strong space, in good condition, it needs breaths in towns and cities, it needs to expand geographically, strengthen it demographically, recover the territory… All that also needs it.

Is the homeless tribe? Always on the street you…

This relates to the format of the program. Before we started, we said: “We cannot make a program about Euskera, interviewing people – mostly men – who have bookshelves full of books behind them.” This picture indicates that the program is for certain people, and it's precisely our program for those particular people, but not for them. The street gives air, talk. On the street you cannot say “morphosintaxi”, you have to say the opposite. The street helps us to use popular, understandable language, regardless of technical language. The shield of the words of the tribe has three words: “Sure, concise, juicy.”

Is the Euskaldun zaharra tribe, the new one?

The tribe is Basque and Euskaltzale. There is an interesting debate about the concept of Euskaldunberri, if we have to eliminate it. I am in favour of maintaining the concept of Euskaldunberri and I have one reason: it emphasises the efforts of the Euskaldunberris. The fact of being Euskaldunberri means that from a certain age, knowing little or nothing, the person who has come to the Basque learning process and has come to learn. It's an important group, and in one of our first programs we talk about the Euskaldunberri monument. The whole has been qualitatively essential in our standardisation process, and so far it has received less recognition than it deserves. On the other hand, to explain some of the situations, the use of the Euskera euskaldun berri is essential. It's very valuable, very respectful. For the rest, in our tribe we have all kinds of Euskaldunes and we have tried to prove it: in the tribe everyone has access, of all ages, origins, colors and ways of thinking. We have tried to make a street for everyone in the tribe, which aims at Euskera and communication in Euskera. Whoever agrees with this, has easy access to our street: a common framework in which whoever wants to live, communicate and enjoy in Basque can do so.

I am amazed at the number of people who think about the Basque country.

There are reasons, or at least I interpret that as such. We live a time of change, we have experienced many changes in these years, all the changes together: When did ETB emerge, when did the law of the Basque Country emerge, when did the Basque Country, when did the main institutions of the Basque Country, when did the Basque Country begin to socialize with force? In the 1980s. That is when we start with a lot of things that we consider normal today. So those of us who were young and those who then arrived turned around the process that is now quite stabilized. Now, however, since 2010, we have to look at the next decade and say that that generation born in the 1980s is on the street, there are fathers and mothers, entering the labor world: They have had ETB, the Basque Country batua, the textbooks, the practice in favor of the Basque Country, are many Euskaldunberris, consume more products in Spanish than in Basque…

And yet ...

Euskalgintza, she gets to where she comes. Our objectives are not being met, much has been done, but we also have frustrations. Euskera is not used as much as we wanted or expected. We cannot do that in many areas. On the other hand, the socio-political moment is new, the economic crisis is also there, the new immigrants are at home… In other words, the concepts and schemes that served us in the 1980s do not serve us today. The situation has changed profoundly: the characteristics of our linguistic community are totally different. The context has also changed a lot: in our youth we heard the Basque and the Spanish in the plaza del pueblo; today, the 8-10 year-old boys and girls also have news of Spanish, Basque, English and some other. Monolingualism is discatalogued, as is bilingualism, our children are multilingual, both in music consumption and in social media. We need new concepts to understand the current situation, to move forward.

And how do we move forward?

We need much more social and political commitment, more agreement on standardisation. We need other concepts, dynamics and knowledge. Looking to the future, it is time to make a qualitative leap. Here's an image that Jon Sarasua has given in Hiztunpolisa: the semi-empty bottle, and Jon says: “But the bottle has holes; if the filling rhythm is not kept, it will go out more than enter!” Be careful, because we are winning in some areas and losing in others. In some geographical areas, in some social areas, we are winning, and in others we are losing, and in that we will be in the coming years. We raised higher expectations, because we had no reference, and we should be careful, because excessive frustrations have never been good.

Ruper Ordorika Song: “Hold accounts / five thousand seven hundred / different cultures / disappeared throughout history. / They say that for centuries progress / eating has been based”…

Seven thousand languages in the world. The giant languages, twelve. They're playing at another level. On the other hand, we have State languages, which have great advantages, but not all State languages are better than us. Moreover, on several occasions, we arrived earlier than some state languages, such as the number of articles on Wikipedia. In this society there is an active minority, that minority is the one that has brought us here and of which we are a party. That active minority is genuinely active in Euskal Herria and we have achieved what we have achieved. Well, among the minority languages of the world – apart from Catalan – Euskera is the main reference. A reference for minority languages in Europe and for many in the world! We have responsibility as a community and as a people, and it is important that this idea is also passed on to future generations. From now on, each generation will have to decide whether or not to maintain the Basque Country, and to what extent, because we will all be multilingual, to a greater or lesser extent. Time and time will condition the decision, but each generation will decide. And in that decision, we'll have to bear in mind that we're a benchmark for many other communities, and if we don't move forward, the entire platoon will go backwards with us. That is the added responsibility.