Both answers are correct. This is confirmed by the mother of the three adolescents, Xandra Ruiz Santamaría, of Arizkuren. “A healthy relationship, a clean diet, a rest and an active life are essential to achieve the balance of the bodies,” he says. He tells us that if one notices the absence of one of these characteristics, the body will tell us, for example, that we are going to get sick: “When we find ourselves in this imbalance, we will seek in nature different possibilities of overcoming.”

He was abandoned in Arizkuren in the 1940s, and 50 years later, in 1995, he was recovered and rebuilt by a group that wanted to put aside “noises and dams.” Today lives a “family” of 18 people in this small village located between mountains. They drive health self-management. They underline the wisdom and lifestyle of our ancestors and apply them to the beliefs and lives of citizens. “Now that we are part of nature, we have to recover the connection with it. We are committed to it and to our personal development. It takes patience, interest, curiosity, propoleo, balm, syrup...”, says Ruiz.

They're learning and teaching. Studying medicinal plants and detecting natural solutions, “understanding health and bodies”. In fact, they want to make us see that there's a doctor in themselves, and they're constantly talking to us about how close our ancestors were to that statement. In order to disseminate all this, cosmetic and health products are produced and sold at trade fairs, under the name “Aritzkuren tienduka”: “All of this is carried out through self-management, based on the common economy”. Throughout the year they offer different courses in the same town.

“It is also important and necessary for there to be a health service for all. Surgery, dentistry, physiotherapy...” says Ruiz. “Also aromatherapy, music therapy, homeopathy, bach flowers...”, he adds smiling. But he believes it is key to give proper use to all of this, as it has a close relationship with the educational and social model. With medicines, for example, Arizkurendarra has doubted: “Sometimes they harm the healing process itself, as they act on the symptom and not on the roots of the problem, causing another problem where it was not.”

This large family hardly uses drugs, only when the disease lasts more than ten days and propoleo and the plants are not influenced. In cases of colds, infections, fever or flu, for example, they receive natural aids: “Although the healing process is more difficult, we will have no side effects.” They use willow to treat fever or sinusitis, bacon for bronchitis, iruntzi-belar for headache or cough, rocky plantine or asthma, eucalyptus for cold, avellano for fever and cough, etc.

As explained to us by Ruiz Santamaría, the doctor was very surprised when Nahia, Oihu and Maray first came to the doctor for a review, since until then it had never been attended. “The ability of the body to heal is terrible. I thank life for not needing more,” his mother says.