I've been told you're sick. Lung cancer has affected you… How are you?

Oddly enough, OK. Happy. Since September, I've worked as a doctor, from trial to trial. It took a long time until December 20, when I was diagnosed with cancer. They told me they had caught my lungs, which was a serious, very serious thing. You can't rip off your lungs, you can't remove what I have in my lungs. Until then, they had only suspicions. I asked for the first time: “Cancer? The tumor?” and they: "Jesus, ma'am! Don’t tell me about that!” as I said. But it's been cancer. Physically I'm very good, I breathe well, I don't have any pain... I'm great. I know what I have, I've seen the disease in the scanner, but as long as it doesn't hurt me, very well.

How are your days going?

Every living day, every day, every day. I think it's very important, because I didn't know before. I've learned. My eyes had been mestizos for five or six years, and I had been told that I had glaucoma in my eye. It seemed to me that I should be blind. That gave me a terrible blow, a great anguish, and it lasted a long time. I was just thinking about how I was going, how I was going to get stuck at any time, where I was, who I wasn't going to know. I would get my chest dirty and I wouldn’t be able to see the dirt… I suffered so much, beforehand! All of a sudden, I started thinking about something else. “What’s going on here? I see it, I'm seeing it. So why am I suffering from something that may not happen to me? I may catch a bus earlier!” Here's the bus! Ja, ja…

You have cancer on the bus in question…

Yes, yes! From that moment on, automatically, my brain changed mechanism, my mind decided not to suffer one more minute for something that might happen. The bad thing is, six months ago, the doctor told me I don't have glaucoma. Apparently, after an examination carried out six years ago, glaucoma had to have a certain development, to reach a specific point. But glaucoma has not had the development announced nor has it reached the point where it is said it should have arrived! Therefore, I have been told that there was no glaucoma... Then I learned a bad way, something, that is, to stop suffering, to live every moment. And, for example, right now I’m at ease, time also makes it beautiful, I don’t have any pain… I’ll complain of pain when I start!

Why did you go to the doctor in September?

Shortly after finishing a cold, I caught another one. It wasn't normal. In addition, the flu wasn't going too fast, it lasted for me a month and more. In Argentina, we also had a long stay, and I was there for a month and a half with the flu. And as soon as I got there, another one had happened! And come and the flu again! "This is not a good game! I told myself. “There are times,” the doctor first told me. But, as has been seen, it was only a matter of time.

What does your interior say now?

I'm happy because I'm aware and enjoying everything. For example, the amount of love I'm getting. That makes me happy and gives me a lot of strength.

Now that we are talking, an outbreak has already passed; the second is about to start. You told me that after the first session of the second chemotherapy, your hair will fall. That before you wanted the interview…

Ja, ja…

Are you worried about pain and hair loss?

That is a thing of the image itself! Many call me “La peli” – “La pelirroja” – because I am a redhead. I have a kind of stamp of my character. Now I am “La peli”, but without hairs... However, I do not think it is just mine. I think men are more accustomed to seeing your helmet and that of the hairless neighbor. You won't see the bald. In addition, I feel very ugly without hair. This revives me! However, I hope to support it as well. But none of that!

How did the whirlwind catch you?

I'm amazed at that. There are beings, I guess you have to face hard things. I've learned it since I was young, that's what I've been taught: you can't go, you can't fascinate yourself, hide yourself so you don't see things. I think I have dealt with the situation: “Death is coming, we know it’s going to come, that can be the moment”… My father, for example, died when he was sixteen years old, and my mother, on the contrary, did not reach the age I have, because he died at 63. So I have been in that extra year! Ajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajaajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajajaj

Your father died at the age of sixteen, as you said. What lessons are being learned from this?

The need to deal with the situation. When the father died, it was that: having to face the situation. My mother had always been very expressive, very loving, but she had never cried, even though she was crying for having to cry. “We’ve cried! Now, go ahead!” It's a profound lesson: in the face of the critical situation comes the answer spontaneously, without the need to dominate you.

They say that you are a member of the association to die well, of the Association for a Dignified Death…

I saw my mother's death and I found it terrible. He died of cancer in a private clinic. He was unlucky, because he got sick at Christmas and we took him on New Year’s Eve’s day to the clinic: few doctors, a nurse knows where… I’m afraid to remember him. My mother was tormented, and we, the brothers, in the halls, asking for help: “Please do something!” Nobody appeared. Terrible. Terrible… I have always thought, and my mother also thought, that we should own the right to euthanasia, that we cannot treat people worse than animals: when a horse is about to die, we alleviate suffering. And the mother died with a lot of pain, the doctors didn't help her. Later, I learned that there was the Association for a Dignified Death, that there was a living will… and I became a member of the association: I am 22 of the Basque Country, although, as shameful as it may be, I do nothing but pay my share. However, I see very well the work the partnership does on behalf of the people who are about to die.

How does the partnership help?

For example, in palliative care. Partnerships help to minimize suffering, work to fulfill one's own will, take care that you don't suffer what you don't want, make sure you're the ultimate owner of your life and your body. The partnership wants you to sort out the patterns of the last moments.

You told us your mother was favorable to euthanasia. I thought it was something of the youngest...

The mother had read a lot, read a lot. A lot, a lot, a lot. A lot, a lot, a lot. He was passionate about literature, he had a very broad head, he was modern. Since I was a child, I've talked about euthanasia and many other issues with my mother.

Where did your passion for reading come from?

It's a very curious and pretty story. An interesting question, which I really like. The fondness for reading my mother… Well, I had to say my grandmother’s!

Was the grandmother reading?

Yes. He belonged to an orphan town in Iurreta. The house was called Kaikuena de Etxebarrieta, around the trash can. Our grandmother was a cousin of the father of the mayor of Bilbao, Iñaki Azkuna. Her mother died at birth, and her father married her sister-in-law, as then. Grandma was considered an orphan until her death. Her stepmother didn't seem to want much. She studied letters in Iurreta's school with Mrs. Leone's teacher, very elementary things. At the age of sixteen he went to serve Bilbao and it happened to him to work in the house of an owner of the Urquijo Bank. The banker's wife, mother of six children, had a very good relationship with our grandmother. Grandma was very smart and this woman facilitated her access to books, opening her home library to read the books. And this is how my grandmother read a lot, but in Spanish. And, in my opinion, that is where the Euskera-Castilian contradiction begins.

Contradiction? What do you mean?

The way to learn, to discover the world, came in Spanish. Books were for the mother the greatest and most beautiful thing in the world. But all the books were in Spanish! My grandmother spoke in Spanish. I was born in the 50s, my father, Spanish… My grandmother spoke in Basque with my mother, especially so that I did not understand her. And here's the contradiction. “We have to do it in Euskera, because Euskera is ours,” said Grandma. With me, in Spanish. At that time, the school was also in Spanish, to speak that, the mountain was called the Euskaldunes friends by the nuns. I learned Basque on the street later, on my own! I was coming home and I was speaking in Basque with my grandmother. I was telling myself that I was talking weirdly, but I was happy to speak in Basque with me. I suddenly wanted to learn the tuteo, with my grandmother. Grandma, am I going to vomit? “To my grandmother! No, by the way!” And I never learned noka!

Before Mom, it’s your grandmother who reads…

And I really appreciated the books. He widows and runs a large grocery store in Durango. He belonged to the Zugaza family. His greatest pride was that, in times of war, he had preserved the great library of the Zugaza: “Quiet, I keep it!” he told them. I don't know how she kept it, but Grandma took over the Zugaza library during the war. He told it all his life. The book was a sacred thing for the mother. I didn't know how to write. In the store, when I had to write "potato" I wrote "p-t-t," I made a kind of syllabic. He also read the newspaper every day. I only read in Basque a few little things about the church. In the Basque Country, too little was said at the time in Durango. It was done a little bit in the Jesuits. My grandmother sent me to Father Goikoetxea, on a prescription, praying, to learn Basque. And I learned, I don't know Basque!

Didn't you know Euskera and the grandmother sent you to pray in Euskera?

Yes, yes! One contradictory thing! “Our Father, who is in heaven…” And after the grandmother, the mother read a lot and wrote well, but before she was a grandmother. Here, however, for me it is interesting that relationship between Euskera and Castilian, how to preserve loyalty to Euskera: Castilian was the source of wisdom and Euskera ours. It was one of the stresses of our grandmother.

Is this tension also a matter for today?

Yes, we always have a broken soul.

The Spanish father said…

Santander. His father was Navarro, his mother from Santander. The father, who was fourteen years old when the war broke out, had no war, but had to do a long military service, from three to four years. In 1944, the boys who practiced military service in Santander were transferred to Durango to fight against the machines circulating in the Pyrenees. They didn't finally go there. My parents met in Durango. In 1949, they married and I was born in Durango, Uribarri. I have the name of the Virgin Mary.

He started teaching young people, and in the early 1970s he worked at the ikastola as a Miss…

To begin with, in 1970-71, I was a professor at the ikastola of Iurreta. I attended high school until the fourth year and went to Bilbao to study Commercial Expert. There, when I was in the third year -- sixteen years -- my father died to me... I lost the course... I started working in an office and realized I hated that work. I didn't take long to tell my mother, “Not in the office, Mom, I don’t want that.” “Child, what do you like? What would you do?" And I told her that I wanted to make a teacher, even though I hadn't wanted it before, because being a teacher was the path of the schoolchildren I was studying in Durango. Most of the girls who had graduated from high school came from Durango to Vitoria to study as a teacher. I didn't want that, because I was a little rebellious. But I had given private classes and I liked it. My mother said to me, “One of the most important things in life is to have a profession you like. If you like it, do it, but you’ll have to pay for it, you’ll have to do it.” And I started working at a nunnery school in Durango, in early childhood education, and I was coming from free to Vitoria to study. In 1970 I finished teaching and, with the title, I was awaiting the ikastola of Iurreta. And there I went.

I have read in an interview with Hik Hasi magazine that you had an impact on the audit…

That same course came to visit us and closed the ikastola to us. Our ikastola was called “Catequesis San Miguel”. Since we were closed in March and until June we have been from home to home with the children, always in the house of others. The inspector, in order for us to teach him, asked us for the certificate of action of the civil guard and the police and the approval of the pastor. The pastor gave me the document very easily, although I had already stopped going to church. I had gone to look for the civil guards and there they had no evidence of that, I would have been given by the inspector. When I went to ask the inspector for a certificate, “you, dangerous ETA leader,” he started, “Are you here to give class? In life you are not going to teach!” "We'll see! I said, for my part, more proud than greedy. “We’ll see!” he says. He was twenty-one years old… that inspector was Don Pablo Sánchez Aizpuru. An empty facha. He was a “Dangerous ETA leader”, as we were locked up in Durango on the occasion of the Burgos trial that took place in December. We spent the night in the church and when we arrived at it, the civil guards collected the names of all.

The inspector who prevented him from teaching...

Without her accreditation she could not teach class, but that same summer we gathered several people at the seminar in Pamplona in a course for professors of ikastolas. However, we were also kicked out of there. We needed space to follow the course, and I said I would find something in Durango. And soon after, I had a place in Iurreta, Arriandi, in the nunnery convent. There we did the course! Imanol Gaztañaga, Gaztantxo, was the coordinator of the teachers of the Biscayan ikastolas who then met in Euba, but went to military service and I was offered the coordination of the teachers of the Biscayan ikastolas. I was the coordinator of the teachers and I was paid by the teachers. The teachers paid a hundred pesetas each to supplement my salary. I never missed that salary. They coordinated very well to pay the coordinator! Meanwhile, I left Santurtzi's ikastola as a professor for use outside Sanchez's territory. At that time, I was organizing pedagogical courses and meetings, by bus or coach. We also had an office, in Ribera de Bilbao Street, in the headquarters of Euskaltzaindia. One year in the Ribera, another in the street Bola from the headquarters of the journal Anaitasuna. We were inventing an active, secular, modern, democratic school.

Did you know pedagogy?

Yes and no! By then he had already been a three- or four-year-old professor at the Durango Nuns School, and another had done so at the ikastola. On the other hand, I have always read a lot, and then I also read a lot, especially because I was the coordinator. I started to discover a lot of things. I read all the Freinet, Freire, Neill, Makarenko, Postman and Weingartner … Those who were reading at the time. The parent coordinator of Bizkaia, Arantza Santamaría, and I went to Legorreta, to Ikaztegieta – there were some nuns’ convent – and we met with Jaxinto Setien and Arantza Allur de Gipuzkoa, with Eusebio Osa de Araba, with Kontjxi Zabaleta. From 1971 to 73 I would be there...

What was the policy so hot?

By then it was already politically organized. It was from the EMK. I was working on something that I liked and was interested in, and on the other hand, I was in politics, even though the two things came together. The conflict of mentality was at its peak, the issue of the Basque Country batua and the fight against the hatxe. On the one hand, there were very right-wing people, guardians of the Basque essences, and on the other, people like us. For example, we were the first women to take pills. We'd read Sartre and Fanon, we'd read Freud. I remember the words of a Euba fraile: “What a Marxist!” Yes, we would also read Marxism, and at the time when it was the law “euskaldun, fededun”, we were against it, that slogan that seemed to us a karka, a very reactionary thing. In this environment, at the time when he was coordinator of teachers of the ikastolas of Bizkaia, the ikastola of Deusto expelled several professors, for example.

The layoffs occurred in the ikastolas of several towns…

At that time, things had gone well. The history of the ikastolas of Bizkaia has been written, but that does not appear there, the internal tensions do not appear, but some expelled professors of Deusto wanted to denounce, claiming to defend themselves that they worked without paying social security. The situation of the ikastolas was very serious, and I recall that Periko Ibarra – who was a teacher’s lawyer – asked me, that I was coordinator, what he thought of the teachers’ denunciation. I told him that I did not find it appropriate, that the attitude of the ikastola seemed disgusting to me, but that I did not want to open the door to the enemy. There were red streaks then. I didn't know it then, but then I would return.

Back?

Yeah, in 1973, when I went to work at Elorrio. There the ikastola was totally illegal, we worked month after month and we didn't know if we would be closed, or if we would be paid. What's more, we distributed the salary among the professors: between the graduates and the non-graduates, we all paid the same. I worked six years in Elorrio. When ikastola was legalized in 1976, the changes began. When they started not respecting the plurality of ideas, when some wanted the ideology of control. I, for example, appeared on the list of Euskadiko Ezkerra – but in the thirteenth place! – in the first elections in 1977, and what until then was better than good – and together with me others – we became demons. Then there was the extreme right of the PNV, and I say the extreme right of the PNV, because the PNV also had another side in Elorrio. I saw the parents of the PNV, who were fighting each other, caught from their neck and screaming, while the young father said: “Do you think communists have branches and tails?” In the village the priest sent him, and around him he organized the hunting of the reds. Very strong, it wasn't silly. All of us who were in Elorrio marked us very hard.

Why that anger within a number of ikastolas?

Elorrio's, for example, happened soon after Franco's death, and people didn't know how to play in democracy. We didn't know. “You’re from my party, or you’re an enemy,” there was nothing else. I thought it was terrible. I took a big scare, but not only in the ikastola, but also in the movement on the left. Everywhere I saw the same things, the sectarianism that I found to be nauseating, which took me away from politics. Even today, it seems to me to be the most repugnant thing about politics, that sectarianism, never accepting the good work of someone who does not belong to their group. Furthermore, in principle, do not accept it! I'm out of politics, out of quotation marks, because I'm still, but I'm not alone with one party, I don't think you just do things right or wrong. So it happens to me that many times I don't know who to vote for. It's a national vice. We say “Gora gu eta gutarrak”, but who are we? Is “us” what I say? My friends? My crew? That “we” is very small.

The teachers were also expelled from several ikastolas at that time…

Yes. Very good workers were then lost, not the most submissive. The layoffs were the result of the ideological struggle. Like that conflict in Elorrio. It was a bad fight. The abbot of the people and the leaders of the PNV participated there. The professor of sociology of Deusto Ruiz de Olabuenaga requested the examination of the Ikastola and the latter asked the parents if they agreed to give their children to non-Christian teachers. 75% of the parents answered that they accepted us, and those who promoted this study took their children out of the ikastola: we won the battle, we lost the abades of the people and the right of the PNV. The teachers had been working for six years at Elorri's ikastola giving everything. We were leftist people, some of us in politics, some of us not. We shared some principles, we did good pedagogical work. We won the battle, they didn't throw us out. Yours was an ideological struggle. In an assembly I got up and asked Juan José Pujol directly, I think he was from the board of parents, and if not from the committee, in the assemblies that had an important role: “In which party do I have to be in possession of the card in order to keep my job?” Silence, of course. We won the battle and lost the abades of the people and the right of the PNV. I remember the hugs between parents and teachers, after winning that struggle that lasted almost two years, I spent another year at the ikastola. The persecution was such that I was tired and I decided to leave. I came to Vitoria.

When you were the coordinator of the teachers of the ikastolas of Bizkaia, the tragic event, the terrible death of a lady. The flag of the ikastola of Arrasate Adela Ibabe died in 1973 from a clandestine abortion…

It is the time of the expulsions of professors from Portugalete, Santurtzi, Donostia and other ikastolas. The right wanted to govern and control the ikastolas in its own way. The Mondragon conflict was the most prominent indicator of the time, since 16 professors were wanted, saying that they had pictures of Marx in the class… And so! The terrible! Once in the street, the workers surrounded the teachers! It was a very strong thing. Accordingly, in 1973 we organized the first meeting of teachers in Bizkaia. It was an important step to bring together all the teachers of the ikastolas. Until then, we met in areas, I mean, for pedagogical issues. That time was no more than a claim. And in the middle of all of this, what happened in Adelaide.

Death of Adela.

She was pregnant, but in the middle of her narrow life she didn't seem to have given her time to look at herself. He went to the other side, was killed and died of pain. The terrible! I was told by a nurse who was with me at the hospital in Basurto. So I met Natxo de Felipe, when I was in Euskaltzaindia, the poem of Gabriel Aresti – which was written by Aresti and Natxo himself – who wanted to put music to him and who comes to search for the music of Alostorrea. Our Alavese flower Adela, our flower of Álava, our rock of Giputz Hi, the iron of Bizkaia… Our flower of Álava Adela… [Kantuan da Uri] The death of Adela Ibabe has been somewhat forgotten until three years ago Edorta Arana sustatu.eus regained history.

How did you meet Adela Ibabe?

Not too much. I had a short political relationship with Adela. He was moving in the area of Gipuzkoa, I was in Bizkaia, although we were both in the area of EMK. But we also didn't know what we were, EMK or what, because then everything was clandestine, and nobody was saying where it was from. I joined one with Adela, but I didn’t know that “he” was Adela.

He came from Elorrio to Vitoria and started working in public school. Soon, you were creating didactic material.

It was nice to start teaching Euskera in public school. We did a great job creating materials. First we made the batch of Hegaz. Then, Kalakari. We drew, wrote… we did everything. I would make two points. On the one hand, we're looking for a different way to teach the language, because language books until then were more boring than boring, and in some cases they remain. We wanted to make other books, books that would also serve to laugh. Learning and laughing could go together! On the other hand, we guarantee the presence of the girls. In Hegaz, in Kalakari -- we show girls and boys in the same proportion, in images, in stories and in everyone. It was the law of our side!... At one time, starting in 1982, textbooks used in schools needed approval from the Department of Education of the Basque Government, some teachers were making the necessary reports on the pedagogical proposals of these materials, and I always said this: “Yes, but there are no women here. Their presence does not exist. You cannot accept this material and put it on the way to school because it is discriminatory.” We spent years in this struggle, until one day the window opened. But for many years, people didn't understand our insistence.

You designed different materials for models D and B.

We realized that Euskera could not be taught in the same way to the students of the Basque people and those who did not know Euskera. Another thing is the material that we could do at that time. We were three teachers who, at the command of the Government, were creating materials for model B. We did one or two books a year. The models were already in place by 1983 and the material had to be removed! We were making materials until 87. In our case, we were making material and teaching it to the teachers, explaining how to act. It was, in a way, the preparation of the teachers. From 81 to 87 we elaborated the materials and worked with the teachers: making the material, meeting with the professors, explaining it, discussing it, putting them into practice, collecting the notes… They were teacher seminars, we worked with the professors. We had to read a lot at the time. "I know nothing! ", he said to me. So I started looking at the two of them as crazy to see how the second language is taught. First, especially in French; then in English, but I didn't know much in English! It's the gravity of the intellectual career itself. “I don’t know… I don’t know…”

Where did you find the answers?

I remember a course that Xixa Gardner gave us in the early 1980s. Very interesting, it helped me a lot. He talked to us about communicative competence. Or the journey from René Richterich to Zaragoza with his speech. There was no big deal here! What Mari Karmen Garmendia said: “We reading the book of Siguan and Mackey, and with them we began to build a bilingual system!” And another, Italian, Renzo Tittone. Atal hiru urte. I mean, on the one hand, we had readings, albeit few, and on the other, we also had lectures and courses that were done here and there. We were going to Sitges to the days on bilingualism that were held there. For example, in 1983 we presented a study carried out by the Kalakari group at the Rogelia Alvaro children's school in Vitoria-Gasteiz. It still seems to me a good research job, with children three or five years old talking to masters Pili Sanz and Pili Hernández. We studied how they talked to children, how they talked to children… we did a very dignified analysis, it was one of the first papers we published. We didn't know what was going on in school, why and how we got the kids to talk in Basque, and we wanted to know what was going on in school. What is happening is that we still have to know what is going on today. It is necessary to analyze, analyze, reflect on what is happening in the learning and teaching processes of language, because if no one can give a class well. We too, although we thought about it, had a lot to say how it was going to be taught well. I started dressing up at that time. Asking questions, searching for answers… Going to Sitges, for example, collecting theoretical references, seeing processes and studies from other places…

When he mentions Sitges, what has Catalonia brought to him?

I went to Barcelona for the first time as coordinator of ikastolas. I would be twenty-one years old. At the ikastolas here we read and opened Freinet's books, but we also made colonies, toy campaign at Christmas, and a lot more. On the occasion of the Christmas campaign, we went to Barcelona to the cooperative Abacus de Rosa Sensat to bring non-sexist and non-violent toys. We were campaigning on several ikastolas. In Barcelona we contacted people of the highest pedagogy, such as Marta Mata. They treated us with special affection. After that relationship, I was going to Rosa Sensat's courses in summer. We discussed pedagogical ideas, but they came with political ideas, dressed against Franco and fascism. We were talking about democratic school. A very rich world. I have learned a lot from Barcelona, I have made good friends there and until recently I have worked with them in the research.

In research, for having been a professor of Didactics of Language and Literature at the University of the Basque Country for a long time and until his retirement.

At one point, the production of books ended. We did them until the sixth grade. Meanwhile, I also began studying Basque philology, convinced that I knew nothing and that I had to dress myself. In '87 I finished Basque philosophy and did a course of trainers in Madrid, organized by the Department of Education here and the Ministry of Madrid. Quite long, classic… Contents above content! I finished and started in a Pedagogical Practice PAT, a trainer. I spent the year there, but I didn't see myself. I didn't like the structure of the PAT, maybe because I was used to working differently. I didn't have good experience, and in the meantime, the university plazas left. I presented it and pulled out the plaza in Bilbao. Not in Vitoria! Ha, ha… It was easy! By then I had already published several textbooks, articles and several studies and, on the other hand, my field was that of didactics, I had been working on didactics for years!

He thought that languages were not taught well in our country.

I do not think so. Knowledge of the forms of language is often confused with knowledge of how to use them. Language analyzes languages, decomposing them. Another thing is to teach the language, that is, to teach it to use it, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to teach the language as an object. The knowledge of language as an object, when analyzing its forms, intends a better use of language, otherwise it does not make sense. The objective of the Basic School is not to create linguists, but to train people trained for good use of the language. To do so, the user must know the details of the language, develop the ability to observe the internal mechanisms of the language, to search a thousand borders to the meaning and to take care of the way to express oneself. That is the important thing. It is no use saying things in any way, with the objective, with the interlocutor, we must use the best way that suits the situation.

Why is it not done? Something so obvious…

It's not easy. There is a long tradition of teaching. The teacher speaks and the students listen, thinking that it is about learning to do it through the ear. On many occasions, the objective is to understand the linguistic categories, not to train the language in practice and analyze it to improve it next time. It's true, but it seems that changing all of this is very difficult. On the other hand, the teaching staff is trained in the university, in the teaching schools. Many of his professors deal with literature. I, at least, believe that this is the tendency of many teachers universitarios.La to teach languages and, above all, the latter, does not have a specific training in our language. The University, in itself, is dedicated to the training of specialists of a level, but not to the training of teachers who can guide the language teaching of students aged 3, 4, 10 or 13. So how to train students in the use of language at different levels and levels, at different depths, nuances and nuances? The teacher cannot just work the way, forgetting communication, or taking any type of communication for good. We have to plan the displacement, the passage from the discourse to the form on a continuous path. You also have to consider how the student's head is, that is, help him build the puzzle of language, teach him how to organize it. Didactics is responsible for this, and didactics analyzes the students' points of view, to put them in contact and in contradiction. In my opinion, the main question is, both in the didactics of language and in any other area, how the problem arises, how to bring to light what seems so obvious.

It gives work fatigue...

Yes. On the contrary, do a boring job. For me it is a nice game that can be made with two languages. In our country there are no children with less than two languages. Some have up to three and four. It is very interesting to make comparisons between languages. Why do you say “friend” in Basque and “friend one” not in Spanish? Ah! Why, how and when? The internal logic of each language is the key to making internal puzzles to figure out how the pieces work and to give each language what has emerged from it. Translations, for example, are ways of thinking about language, a way of making mentalist thinking. But not to remain in forms, to realize the complexity of communication and to train in their refinements. Look, five years ago, a friend asked me to accompany my daughter, because she had difficulties in Euskera. “Come,” I said, picking up the material language. “The language” is, in our case, Spanish: “Spanish language and literature”. The Basque Country, for its part, is “Euskara”, not a language somewhere. My friend’s daughter came and taught me exercises like the ones the teacher would put on the exam: you could, we can... and the student had to uncover the characteristics of each verb! Not even in the most corrupt tradition have I seen such a morphological analysis, not a phrase!Sorry, “I don’t know how to do that and I don’t want to learn!” I said, “you can tell the professor that I didn’t want to teach you in this.” I like grammar, I think grammar is important, but studying those verbs that way was like you, sheer trash, not teaching grammar, not becoming aware of the mechanism of language.

Complaints about the obsolete model…

The world has made a lot of progress! The girl I've talked to isn't easy to talk to in Euskera, because in school they've never given importance to oral use. He writes very well, but unnaturally. In any case, teaching is not aimed at the teaching of the written language, but at the teaching of the Latin language. An in-depth debate is needed to decide what is fundamental in the teaching of language…

You have a model that is widespread in our country, yet…

I don't even know where the blame is. Many philologists who come to the schools or faculties of teachers know about literature, but to prepare future generations they should also know about languages. They should also know psycholinguistics and pedagogy. They should be able to analyze subjects in a didactic way to choose what to teach well. But you don't know. At best, they have passed a CAP or regular Pedagogical Aptitude Course and it is over. They start teaching and for years they will train the teachers of the next generation. I'm not saying all the teachers are bad, but it's the model and no one argues. The university should take a serious look at their behavior.

He says that the world has made much progress and, on the contrary, the teaching of language is not going well...

The system commands. No one monitors how you teach, whether or not what the students learn is worth. This is not done because it requires reflection, analysis, training. To access the University, for example, it is valued that, along with the title, articles are published both in the Basque Country and in specialized journals; the publication of articles, preferably in English, Basque or Spanish, is not the same. Another thing is whether what they publish has anything to do with what they teach or not. That is the case.

What happens when the child “learns” a language, the Basque language, but does not use it and does not play with it?

Do you ask me why the Basque child does not want to use Euskera or who learns Euskera as a second language? There are, of course, many situations and reasons: in the case of people who have Basque as a second language, the reason is that they have less facilities. At the same time, there is the social shadow of the language: some will find it more valuable to do it in Spanish, there is also the attachment to the language… With them, therefore, there are some behaviors that are related. I, for example, approach the trend of many, who constantly speak Spanish to Basque and Basque to Spanish. The trend has been accentuated over the past 20 years, it has intensified enormously in young people and not so young. The last one I saw in the same hospital, mother and daughter, Euskaldunes very authentic, without difficulties to express things, going and coming from Euskera to Castilian. Despite all my hypotheses and hatreds, that is well studied in many minority languages, and it has to do with the death of language: linguistic confusion is one of the phases of death, it is the sign of social illness. That must be cured, and we will cure it if we give the new speakers enough ease to speak in Basque. The more it is done in Basque, the easier it will be for the student to speak in Basque. The less it is done, the worse, the harder and the more stuttered it will be. In the case of the elderly Euskaldunes, it is a question of maintaining the language, of keeping each language as it is, of not getting used to the least obstacle. To master language, it is necessary to obtain automatisms and to do so, internalize expressions, store them in memory. In order to do this, it is necessary to recover many practices, for example, more theatre should be done at school.

Before it was done…

Also now, in some places, and in Primary. I'm very worried about secondary education. The time to speak must be set. To speak, we have to plan the discourse: decide and order what we are going to say beforehand. In school, it is necessary to create situations of habit for students to talk, register, analyze. The smaller the students are and we start working, the better. We must help those who speak to make them more skilled and those who are fools to be skilled. Oral planning is a solid problem, school organization is mandatory. To teach writing, the same thing, we have to teach writing, the teacher has to be an example, to think about where he begins, where he writes, why he erases, by what criteria we criticize what we write… And we have to spend hours writing each with the students! And when you read, the same thing, everyone has to read! And think about the problems that arise when reading backwards, showing the process of understanding, because the child does not know what the adult does when he passes the eyes of one book to another… Many things.

You have started working at the ikastola but you are in favor of the public school, above all…

For me, public school is important, that school for all. Here's a private school inflation, and that's harmful. It is the path of ideologization and classism. Our children will only have contact with the “our” class, with the “our” class. It seems to me to be a very classical and narrow view. The goal of education should be to prepare our children to look at the world with open eyes. For a rigorous and open look. I have never understood that people on the left also want private “private” classes. At the time of the publication of the ikastolas, for example, I didn’t understand how people on the left supposedly advocated their school of control, “their school.” I don't like that. It seems to me a bad way of educating the people. Diversity comes from school, since we're young, we have to learn to live with others who are different from us. Now we have options, but before the opportunity there is a classicist tendency to close the doors and to classify children. The word is that, classism, even if we don't use it. Education has to be above all ideologies and classisms, beyond that, it is deeper. On the other hand, we are changing educational laws every so often! Each authority wants to seal its seal, bring education to its side. And that's not possible. I think the school should be out of it, just under some basic principles.

By the current public school, against the then school.

It is the public school of the people, of all and all, that helps to create common benchmarks for all and all. There you have the opportunity to meet people of all kinds, to know where you live, to learn to live together. The more we are separated in schools, the more we will be in society futura.Hasta in the last quarter of the 20th century, neither the state nor the public institutions boosted public school, except for some cases and times. Meanwhile, the church took care of the elite. Franco destroyed the few good public schools in the Republic and opened cultural misery. If, when we were young, there had been a public school for everyone, and well, we would have pushed it back at the time, but it wasn't. The ikastolas emerged because there was no choice! I remember, in Elorrio, how we said: “We will be the ones who will have to teach in Basque tomorrow!” But also how, in general, we would have to teach the ones we would have to teach. We wanted a school that fosters cooperative work and that fosters a passion for knowledge, that educates students on democratic rights. We were doing a job for everyone. That was our perspective. Our intention was to expand what we were doing, introduce Euskera into the public school and renew the school.

What do you say about ikastola?

Ikastolas emerged in a certain situation. At least those of Franco. Trying to respond to another model. The ikastolas had great pedagogical work. And for example, they were the ones who took the first steps towards secular school. Something very important in this country. The change that this people has made is impressive. When I was a kid, there was a priest or a religious in every family. It was a matter of honor. We were the most Christian in Basque Country! But the thing changed in just a few years, and many ikastolas did a great job in favor of laicism, despite all the internal struggles. The ikastolas experienced serious struggles, related to the theme of the unified Basque, on the other hand, the hatxe and not the hatxe. The struggle for modernity took place at the ikastolas and won. I am in favour of the ikastolas, at least the ikastolas of the time.

“The ikastolas of that time,” he says.

I do not think that the ikastolas have followed that march afterwards. Many ikastolas chose a private space, and their professors have hardly been related to those of other networks. I do not know if they are now going to the training offered by the public network, they have made their own way, and why not say so, they have also done their own business. There you can say many things, editorials and others. I don't like that, I don't like the privileges they've had, I don't like the small social commitment they've shown. How many immigrants do you see in the ikastolas? That is what is happening today, even if no one says so. But there’s the data… the education and Euskaldunization of the people should be a commitment of all. I've had a serious anger with the ikastolas, and I've made a public complaint, because the ikastolas opened their doors to the four-year-olds, teaching English. Ikastolas have played a hard role in the commodification of teaching. That has name and surname, it has responsibility. When they saw that we were teaching in Euskera outside of their realm -- out of fear of customers losing themselves -- they started to get into English. I wrote twenty years ago. “But how is it possible to open the door to English in every morning and in linguistic situations? No, please no.” I saw that the argument they used was extremely weak and that it would turn against Euskera. And that's it. From there came the dissemination of the English immersion in Navarra by UPN and the denial of the Basque. And not only in our own, the PP soon opened the model in the realm of minority language. In Valencia, I was told in a speech: “It is your fault, the Basques!” I asked him: “There are Basques who are to blame, not all!” English... and Basque?

What has been done well, what has been done wrong in the teaching of the Basque Country?

We've had to improvise a lot. It seems that the Basques want everything, and at the same time. Apparently, we are like that. We get nervous and we want everything all of a sudden. “Our students will learn in three languages!”, we listen, and there we are all prepared, not knowing when, how, with whom… Research, in our field, must be linked to teaching and learning, but there is a great pausa.En universality we do not know what school is, but that does not seem to matter to anyone. Can you imagine teaching in college a doctor who has never seen a sick person or who has never worked in the hospital? Well, that's our thing. In the teaching schools, in the language department, our only obsession for many years has been to teach Basque. Unfortunately, when people knew more Euskera, we continue to teach Euskera, perhaps deepening more, but not primarily teaching the didactic language, that is, teaching how to teach the language. And we prepare teachers. Theirs is a practical work, which is built in contact, in action. The teacher has to know well what he has to teach, but also the functioning of the classroom and the learning process of the children, their problems of understanding, the emotions that occur, the mechanisms of analysis and mastery of the language... In addition to instruction, education is ours, and we teachers have to know about it. But there has been a pause, since the university requires nothing more than academic training in the selection of teachers that will prepare the teachers, neither experience in the school, nor research in this field...

How should the situation be corrected?

It is very important to know the university professors who are going to pursue their careers in educational studies, to value the research carried out in school, to experience these achievements. Few engineers who haven't worked with machines will be in college teaching... Why is the lack of practices accepted in our field? Can anyone serve to teach? In addition to the theoretical framework, we need professionals who know these levels of education below. In this sense, students' practices are very important, but few university professors are interested as a field of research and no one obliges or encourages them to do so. But there's the key to the profession, in practice.

You have notes about the Schools of Magisterium, here and there…

When Magisterium Universities were made, I don't know if a good business was done. In the past they were called “Normal Schools”, they were normal, tied to school and somehow marked the rule of teaching. As they become universities, they have moved away from school, teachers teach the subjects, but they are far from the escuela.No it is mandatory that the university faculty have a link with the school, have experience, that the research be linked to the school. In this sense, the School of Magisterium has moved away from the world of real teaching. And so the school doesn't feed on research. Who has to ask the high school teacher to teach otherwise? Where do you get the parameters from? If I wonder where I have taken what I have learned in recent years, it is clear: In France, in England ... In Europe, in studies conducted in the United States, in several Catalan universities. But, unfortunately, little of what we have done among ourselves. We have things to improve and what to look at.

Have been a school teacher, “not very optimistic.”

The truth is, I'm not very optimistic, not even the government has shown interest in this. I could do a lot of things. It could invent the school and, above all, the work of the teachers of the institute, to encourage seminars and good practices, for example, to research and write about experiences, but it does not. Moreover, it seems that the changes introduced in the Master's Degree in Teacher Training in Secondary Education will worsen the current situation. I believe that by learning on the net, innovation and practice will continue to be as inadequate and poorly controlled as today’s. It's not wrong to think that the university is looking at that, above all, at income. Perhaps, taking as a model the title – in practice – other universities that give for money… Then we will be shocked by PISA and the results of the evaluations. And what is the position of the Department of Education on this issue? A lot of responsibility, but responsibility? If you want to do something, you have to have clear objectives, put money and prepare people.

Is the teacher in the spotlight?

Social trust is needed in the teaching staff and at the same time, with some pressure and pressure, reward. We need to look at ways in which they can give a deep perspective on their work and feel socially valued. Teachers should have opportunities and channels to learn, change, discover, propose and do more. Our education system needs solid reflection. Ideally, those who have a higher level of education should go to master's degrees, those who have greater communication capacity and social sensitivity, are able to detect the needs of the student, are able to properly redirect their learning process, and not people who do not know how to look at the student. You can choose the best people for teaching. It can be done, but it takes willingness and money to do so.

It calls for economic investment.

The working conditions of the university have become very hardened, especially for the new teachers. Many work with a miserable salary without knowing whether they will be able to continue in that field of knowledge for a long time. In the last decade, the World Bank has pushed for the commodification of education at all levels. The slogan is that everyone should take care of their education. This trend has been noted very well at university, but liberalism would like to apply it at all levels, to the detriment of the people of the people. And that's an enemy of conquered democratic rights. In basic education, a lot of money goes into the hands of private management. That also has a social reading, of course. The government is not very sensitive to public schools. But by extending the educational system decoupled by socio-economic origin, in a few years' time social division will intensify, to the detriment of all. Great social improvements cannot be expected without leaving a socially pre-staggered system.