It's not a new topic in ARGIA. Children and adults have more knowledge of faraway animals than native animals, and it's hard for us to name the most common plants around us. We have moved away from nature, we have urbanized, the transmission of the environment has fallen from generation to generation… and through books, series, dolls and children’s games, the species that enter the house are the ones that do not realize.

However, it is a game created by the Arma Plaza Foundation, in charge of transmitting the heritage of Hondarribia, through the City Hall. These are six families of letters representing six ecosystems or habitats: the sea and the cliff, the marsh, rivers and streams, the rural environment, the forest and cities and parks. Within each family, six cards representing a being: mammal, amphibian or reptile, fish, bird, invertebrate and plant. Everyone here, some more well-known, others not so much, others threatened… And when we say here we don’t just talk about Hondarribia: These are species that can be found in almost every corner of the Basque Country. In fact, many of the beings on the cards are also found in other countries of Europe. The protagonists of these letters are, for example, the orca, the otter, the sapo runner, the snake with tie, the circus, the platucha, the eel, the trout, the yellow tail, the carnaba, the large carbonero, the carracón, the clavel, the chipa, the ivy… They have also included a seventh family in the cards, which can be attractive and close: Hondarribia giants.

Among other things, the game aims to show the diversity of ecosystems, fauna and flora of our environment, “because the richness of the area is large, and discovering the numerous ecosystems, we internalize that all ecosystems are important, from the marshes to the parks of the city, where there is life. Sometimes it seems to us that forests are very important for the environment and there are them, but there does not end the nature that needs to be protected and cared for; we are surrounded”, says Iñaki Sanz Azkue. He has collaborated from the environmental point of view in the project, while the pedagogical area has been addressed by Lore Errondo. As Olite explains, linguistic ecology is also one of the objectives of the game. Thus, the denominations of the beings of the cards are given in three ways: In the variant of Hondarribia, in unified Basque and in the corresponding scientific name. “We have realized that, in the linguistic aspect of the people, names are often derived from onomatopathies, for example, from the sound made by the birds themselves: Ttirrittarratta is used to denominate the charretada hankabeltza, to say the normal sorbeltz intersection or to express the ttirritta kilker.”

Despite the fact that the result is simple, the interlocutors have emphasised that there is a lot of work behind us, that the least nuance and detail has been taken into account. “We’ve gone crazy to the illustrator, ha, ha. We have drawn the marsh from the photos of the back of Jaizkibel, reproducing concrete colors; we have put the great tool in the space between the marsh and the river, no further or further; we have asked the clover leaf to paint the white… We have been rigorous because we wanted realistic illustrations.” The DIBUJANTE was the work of Eñaut Aiartzaguena.

Knowledge, memory, speed, attention They propose
four sets of cards. On the one hand, the smaller ones can make puzzles, because if the cards of the same family are put together, the puzzle of a particular ecosystem is formed. On the other hand, you can play the classic family game. You can also make a memory game: in some larger cards different combinations have been formed (for example, a fish, a plant, a invertebrate… in the same card); take it, analyze it for a while, then turn the letter and see how many beings we can remember. Finally, they propose a game of attention and speed: if the combined letters go to the center and a creature of the letter itself is repeated, it is said “kapen” and you can acquire that letter in order to collect as many cards as possible. The word "Kape" in Hondarribia means "head to sea."

The idea is to distribute the cards in the local schools and put them for sale through the Arma Plaza Foundation, as according to the interlocutors they are a good excuse to deepen the theme from the game and to work the species and ecosystems both at school and at home. In any case, Olondo and Sanz are clear that the best way to bring local heritage closer to children is to encourage them to observe nature, and for this it is the adults who accompany them in the first years.