The third edition of the Festival of Contemporary Music of Navarra was held in September. I remember that in relation to the presentation of the first or, if not, I remember that, the composer and musical critic Mikel Chamizo took a tweet denouncing the following (5 August 2015): “Basque Association of X: there are always many Navarros. Navarre Association of X: only Navarros”. I have seen it, although I did not remember it, and I answered: “The solution can be the creation of Euskotarren Nafar Elkartea.” However, the fact of not forgetting Chamizo’s complaint shows that he touched me and made me think since then. It can be argued that sociopolitical reasons, it can be said that the Navarre associations or institutions denounce themselves as sub-assemblies, with a kind of subordination; in Navarra you can also talk about the scarcity and persecution of the vasquity to need external support (or, as each one lives their membership, not so alien). All of them do not deprive of the injustice of the imbalance denounced by Mikel Chamizo, nor of the person concerned in many cases.

We have lived comfortably taking into account where many Navarros were going to echo us, without worrying about extending and feeding our own networks; and in which we have had (and in the last two years the wind has blown us) we have to reflect on whether we are playing with reciprocity.

We have lived comfortably the Navarran writers who work in Euskera, despite the fact that our public institutions and our weak companies have not paid prizes, scholarships, travel bags, etc., because, if it has touched us or not, we have been received by the literary institutions of the CAPV, during the period of time that the camp has lasted. The abandonment of Navarre has left the responsibility of others to judge the quality of the letters of the country. The recognition of Navarros writers has come, for example, from prizes such as the Euskadi Literature Awards. Last year, for example, a poet from Malaga won, with a novel, the Euskadi Prize for Literature in the Basque language awarded by the Department of Culture of the Basque Government. He was not the only Navarro to receive the 2016 Euskadi Prize. The work Ulises by James Joyce, translated by Navarro Xabier Olarra in the editorial Igela, based in Pamplona, obtained the modality of translation of this award. In the Spanish essay category, the prize was awarded to Fernando Mikelarena, from Bera.

It seems clear that the legitimization and prestige of Navarre literature has come from institutions outside Navarre. If the new government (as recently promised by Javier Esparza, in 2019, when he comes to the presidency, before throwing away all the advances in favor of the Basque Country) would like to intervene, say, by convening prizes, scholarships or travel bags (to export the Basque culture), and taking all that work out of a comfortable position for another to do so, we would have to invent some mechanism to thank the hospitality of these years. It would not be a bad idea to start with common funding a kind of confederation of what has to do with Basque culture, a common institution. If it is not there, the associations, and if we end up doubling, with the possibility of fishing in one or the other, we are not just the Navarros. Remember how (as we have all seen a case), even the Navarrist creators of Castilian Navarros, even in an anthology/catalogue/exhibition, or when the CAPV has put money/infrastructure, resigns and does not click (as if the situation were otherwise).