Rekarte's profile is not common. At least he fulfilled his mission for a certain time. “Juanito Zelaia’s mission was to try to open the ikastolas here and there.” In the early 1970s, in 1973, the Council of Álava, chaired by Manuel María Lejarreta, created the Euskera Service. Visitation Oiarzabal was the only person in charge and worker of the service and opened an Euskera room in Gazalbide, in the Txagorritxu neighborhood. The teaching in Basque in Aramaio, also influenced by the Provincial Council, soon started.

By then, the Ikastola Olabide was already coming very strongly in Vitoria-Gasteiz, while the Provincial Council of Álava took the necessary steps to create several ikastolas in the Alavesa capital, but only in the capital. At the time, the Deputation did not arrive – even had no intention of arriving –, Jose Mari Rekarte went to the corners. “We started opening a room in Basque in Salvatierra, although I don’t know exactly the year. It could be 1974. Then, in the same Plain. We opened the room in Araia and then in Joy-Dulantzi.” After opening a room in each one of them, with the seed laid, José Mari Rekarte went south, across the Cantabrian range, to the villages of Rioja Alavesa: Their destinations were Lapubs of Labarca, Oion, Lanciego, Villabuena, Mainueta and Labarca. It was 1978.

Jose Mari Rekarte, active agent

Without a guide, Jose Mari Rekarte always did one and the same in all the villages. “I used a method in every village, whatever the village was: I went to the priest and studied the birth books in search of children 3 and 4 years old. Next, we prepared the paper, stating that somehow we had the support of the church – so that there would be no problem – and summoned in writing the fathers and mothers of the children of that age; or signed on my behalf, or on behalf of the federation of ikastolas or some association of fathers and mothers.” Rekarte proposed that parents schooling children in Basque and had the advantages of: “It should be taken into account that at that time the public school did not provide schooling for children up to 6 years old. We started taking the children from 3 to 4 years old and then took the children from 5 years old. Soon after we made an offer for the 2 years. Our goal was to educate the children in Euskera, to create a ikastola.” At that meeting, Rekarte was starting to make the first alliances. “At first, I was going alone or with Ramon Basaras to the meetings we held in the villages concerned, but soon we did so with a closer link, with a citizen who was more involved than anyone in the project.” Working in this way, they would build on that base and on the other the ikastola of the people.

Rekarte, who claims to have very little memory, remembers the names of José Luis Petralanda and Miren Uriarte, the parents who joined the idea of opening a room in Basque: “But there were others. They did a great job, they moved a lot.” Besides Petralanda and Uriarte, there was more, although the children were transferred to the class of the ikastola. And you have to be, because in the first year of 1979-80, seven kids got together in the corresponding classroom.

Look at Uriarte, mother.

See Uriarte, cited above, comes to help the memory of Rekarte, a mother who would send a child to be raised at the ikastola of Labastida. “Two men came to our house [José Mari Rekarte and Ramón Basaras, no doubt] to speak with our father. They brought with them the idea of creating a ikastola. But the newly operated father couldn't leave the house and told the two men that he thought it was a very good idea, but that at the time he couldn't do anything. Then I told him to be quiet, that I would talk to some families in the village.” This led to the appeal to the first meeting to open a hall in Basque in Labastida.

Miren's father had been gudari in the 1936 war. “It was Jon Uriarte Amondarain from Zeanuri. I don't know what battalion he got rid of, except he was a soldier. After the war he worked for a winery in Laguardia, a trucker, and met our mother and married Labastida.” Undoubtedly, from the PNV, these references were those that led Rekarte and Basaras, on behalf of the federation of ikastolas, to the house of the Uriarte.

Born in Zeanuri, Jon Uriarte was Euskaldun, the Basques were four chickens in town. Notable, therefore. “Ama Bastida is from here, she does not know Euskera, and we know nothing more than what we have learned here in the village, in some Basque schools. Despite not teaching in Euskera, my father transmitted a great feeling to us by the Basque. When those two men came with the intention of the ikastola, and as my father was at that time incapacitated, I spoke to some families in the village. Jose Luis Petralanda, Agustin Egiluz, Saez de Vicuña – family of professors Gontzales de la ikastola – and others. After contacting them, the meeting was held.” So they started in Labastida, the same way they did in the villages around them.

Rekarte has a memory of the beginning of the ikastola of Labastida. “It wasn’t an easy workshop. In Salvatierra, Araia and Alegria-Dulantzi we opened the way without much effort, but in Labastida we had jobs.” Peripecias of the village of Labastida in Rioja Alavesa.

Labastida, a difficult place

Ramon Basaras, who was next to Rekarte, served as the secretary and administrator of this newly established ikastola, and other ikastolas from other towns. Share Rekarte’s statement: “I would also say that Bastida was not easy, that it was a pretty hard process to open that class in Basque. For example, in Oion or in Lapufog-Labarka we had more difficulty opening the classroom of the ikastola in Labastida”. Perhaps in spite of conviction. The awareness of the people and of language, perhaps. Until it was time to turn families around with their legs crossed. Basaras tells us: “When boys and girls who, at 3 or 4 years old, entered the ikastola classroom at 6 years old, when their parents had to choose between the ikastola or the public school at that time, doubts emerged in some families. And some of those who supported the ikastola don’t know why they chose the ikastola: for raising their son in Euskera, or for not taking him to the public school then.” For not bringing the public school at the time in Labastida to the one of bad fame, that is, to the place where the children of the civil and Roma guards met.

Aintzane Prieto, student

Miren Uriarte's second son, Aintzane, was born in 1978. The Basque classroom started the following year in Labastida, and there was Aintzane at just 3 years old. “Our class was in the public school building. And the first andereño was Amaia [Ibaibarriaga]. The children were not all the same age, some were one year or two years old, but besides when we were very young, that was also the case. For example, although in the first promotion seven students met, in the second they were no more than four. And in ours, in the third, eight: five girls -- Izaskun, Mary, Virginia and myself -- and Agustín, Gorka and Sergio. After completing the studies of the ikastola de Labarca, three students attended the studies of BUP and COU in the ikastola Assa of Lapucalderón de Labarca, one of them at the Instituto Koldo Mitxelena in Vitoria-Gasteiz and the other in Laguardia. The five girls are from the crew, and Gorka. We have the habit of speaking in Spanish. We tried to speak in Basque, but we rushed to speak in Spanish. On the contrary, with the new friends who have come together in the crew, I started in Basque and I am still in Basque!” Linguistic habits are always at stake, in all the peoples of the Basque Country who are and are not.