1932, Paris. What are your first memories there?

The father had the habit of changing from house to house. I could never be quiet in a place. I was born in Montmartre. I was there for two years. Then we moved to another house and always like that. At that time there were so many chip-houses in Paris, and we lived in them, always for rent. I have memories of the vamlieu and the arrabal back then, but they were very quiet places, there was a rural environment, there were infants selling milk from home to home. When the war came, we separated early: we spent two years in Zuberoa, from 1939 to 41. That saved us.

What do you mean, save her?

We ate. Existing. There was no bread, but there was corn. Maize, maize and maize. Wheat and flour came from northern France and was occupied by the Germans. We were under the porch, I remember singing in honor of the marshal. He lived well in Zuberoa. But we had to go back to Paris, where there was nothing to eat. We came back from Zuberoa and in the first six months we lived very well, as we got a pig that, dead, we were able to pass pigs, chorizo, tripot and chorizo, on the French internal border. We were on the train and after a while we were the soldiers. They were not Germans, they were Austrians. We got off the train, the mother with her broken leg, and the soldier asked. “Do you have anything to declare?” And our mother, showing that broken leg, exclaimed: “This!” And they got us back on the train, with our pigs and all of us. We spent six months with them.

The war was over.

But hunger continued, because France did not raise its head. The Marshall Plan came, to help France. The rails were dismantled. Train stations and all. The French resistance and its allies did everything to prevent the Germans from coming to defend Germany. It was a sad time, although for the children it was very adventurous, full of emotion. Ja, ja…

French resistance has glory.

Little resistance from glory. Until 1943, what did people think of France? Petain! Petaine was going to save France. When Stalingrad fell, people started thinking about something else. And when they saw that the allies were winning in Africa and that there were also French there. Until then, Petain. In all the houses there was also his portrait, distributed and settled in houses and shops.

Despite the war, you grew up in Paris. He did his studies there.

I studied badly. Upon entering, for fifteen days of licking, I suddenly found myself sick and spent three months in the hospital. There was hunger and a lot of other things. Then I went to study again, but I left with difficulty, always late. He walks back and forth. In addition, I had a curious accent of Zuberoa when he spoke French, and when they asked me, he always said “I am Basque”. Always. It was, above all, the school of the children of Burges. I didn't even have a Parisian friend, because the bourgeois didn't cross with us. I made friends to the Bretons and one to the Vietnamese.

Bretons on your way. Jon Mirande was also with the Bretons.

Yes. The Bretons were coming to Paris from Montparnasse. A Breton friend was a dance and song fan. He told me they had a Breton house, and there I started studying Breton. One day I was told that the Basques were going to the Breton house, the dancers and the singers. I went and started in Basque, a little, because I forgot. I understood everything, but I had trouble speaking. I asked those Basques where they had come from and who had come from Paris. I heard that there were patriots in Paris, but I didn't know where the hell they were. I was told that they met in the house of the delegation of the Basque government.

It concerns the representation of the Basque Government on Marceau Street.

When I was Basque, I told them that I wanted to get in touch with the Basques, and they told me what day they met. And I left. I think they met on Thursday, at 7 p.m., to do the singing tests. I leaned and arrived an hour earlier. I went into the delegation and I didn't see anybody down there. I went up to the first floor and saw a man who was busy. I, who was Basque, and there he met that he wanted to belong to the group of Basques. "Why? he asked me, and I, because he was Basque and Basque. “Well, when you learn Basque, we will see if you are Basque!” After a while, he continued: “If you learn Basque well and like Euskadi, you are a nationalist, but not a nationalist. In this house there are people who speak it all in Spanish, never speak a word in Basque. These are nationalists, not nationalists!”

Who was the one who taught you that way?

Andima Ibiñagabeitia. Ja, ja… “We hold seminars in Basque to learn grammar, with someone who already knows Basque. It's so xuxen, zuberotarra." And I went, but it wasn't easy, in one of them they made songs, in the other they danced, in the other, those seminars in Euskera. But I went and there I met Jon Mirande. He was sixteen.

Andima Ibiñagabeitia, on the one hand. Jon Mirande, on the other hand.

They were great friends. Jon Miranda, for example, had no confidence with me. He wrote to Andima in a letter: “Don’t speak that to Txomin and his brother.” I don't know what it was like not to mention, because Andima and Jon Miranda had their secrets. Miranda had another trusted partner, Jon Etxaide. Each year, Miranda was a week ago at Jon Etxaide's house.

For many years they have had to talk about Jon Mirande and have addressed you.

That too, but because there was nothing else. Andima had died. Now I think I'm the last of those who met her. Who has recognised it, who has seen Mirande alive? Haritxelar and Xarriton. And they're also dead. It was a bipolar Mirande, with times of depression, with pessimism, with periods of optimism. I started writing when I was optimistic, I was walking with patriots and pretenders. For example, when he felt pessimistic! Three times he wanted to commit suicide and the third has succeeded.

What drove him to start writing?

Andima said to me: “You have to write because there is no young writer, on the one hand, and on the other, you learn the language. You will learn in writing.” And yet, at home my father and my mother spoke Basque, I understood everything, but I was talking… In one year I started speaking in Basque. In Txipita, they say, he spoke in Basque. I went to school and I lost. When I was in Zuberoa, I took her back. His brother has always known.

Andima Ibiñagabeitia, propeller.

She pushed me, she pushed us. We met at least once a month and explained to each other what we had written. Andima said: “You have to use all the issues, even if people are outraged.” Mirande wrote his first poem in 1947, and what did he write? A sonnet in the entire dialect saying he must kill himself.

Did you have any relationship with the Basque Country?

North, zero. Relations with the South. There was a house in Baiona, in Beyris. [Delegation of the Basque Government. Villa Izarra]. When we were going south, we were going over there. “Are you going to bring this package?” they told us. From Beyris to San Sebastian. There was no whip!

Who were you in contact with in the South?

In Donostia we saw Juan San Martín, Imanol Laspiur, Serafín Basauri, Koldo Mitxelena, Aingeru Irigarai, Gotzon Egaña, in Telefunken [J.J. Azurtza... Those gave encouragement. On the other hand, there was a magazine called Egan that wasn't bad done. It stimulated us. We didn't have anything else. While Andima [Ibiñagabeitia] was there, until 1953, he was the driving force: "Write, write! he would tell us. And that's when Jon Miranda wrote the majority. For starters, he wrote most of the poems, between 1947 and 53.

Under the dictatorship Hego Euskal Herria.

We were writing, but the readers? In the South, yes, there were some readers and collaborators: [Theodoro] If it was from Hernando, it was he who warmed us up. All against in the North. For starters, cures. Here, some priests said they would demand that all Mirande's works be entered into the Vatican Index. I think [Piarres] that Lafitte contacted Justo Mokoroa in Bilbao to go and see the bishop and said: “There is a writer, Jon Mirande, who is going to be very harmful to our young people. Can all your writings be banned?” The bishop replied: “If we prohibit them, they will sell better.” That's where Mokoroa ended. The beak, one of Xabier Kintana's idols, but I say: “Your idols, my enemies, most. I don't want you."

You started writing, in order of Andima…

Andima told us that nobody was writing and I started writing, and I had to follow. Where are the others? At first we were three, then 30, now I don't know how many we are.

You have published 22 books. You've ever said you've written a lot, "maybe too much."

Yes, too much. Mirand and I didn't react the same way. Mirande was angry when he saw the lack of culture of the Basques. I, on the other hand, didn't get angry, I wrote, I created Gatu beltza, Gloria to the pig, and things so light, because I saw people doing serious Basque literature, boring things. If it's not a bit of humor, it's nothing. In the end, I think everyone has understood. Gabriel Aresti understood that you had to have humor. [Bernardo] Atxaga as well. Luckily.

Too written, too read in Txomin Peill...

In French literature, you ask the name of a writer 35 years ago, and young people don't know it. And the others, not very much. Forgetfulness is normal. I think we haven't done enough so that we can all read our work online. Because in the end we don't win. We writers don't get rich. Everything goes into the Internet and it's free.

Our situation has changed since Andima encouraged you to write it in Paris.

I'll just say one thing: we were so few, we didn't eat. We didn't die each other. Now, there are mordants. There are some breeders who believe they are the best and to prove it they need to lower everyone else. It didn't exist before, even if people thought about it sometimes. He recently published Mirande's work, Aresti was a communist, Mirande was not. [Antonio] Arrue was a Francoist, Carlist, but he helped Egan magazine and many other works in Euskera. So it wasn’t like now…