The poem tribute to Gabriel Aresti at the popular mass held in Andoain ten days after the death of Arrangi (the feeling of Auhena is available on the Internet).

Pain. From Aresti, a smoke ball suffocates the lungs. And the pain, not only those who knew Rikardo Arrangi, but all those who knew him, those who read the works of Rikardo Arrangi, Anaitasuna or Rikardo Arrangi of that time in Zeruko Argia, antecedent of this ARGIA.

The model and example is Ramuntxo Kanblong. In the issue of the journal Herria of July 31, 1969, Rikardo Arrangi, in his article of zombie reflection, shows the acute pain he feels: “The death of Rikardo Arrangi has stunned all his colleagues. As expressed by the Basque Country: transformed into stone. Who could have guessed, however, that he left us at some point cunning, vacant and 26-year-old workers. Laborer, I said. It was heard only on the day of the burial: ‘Euskal Herria has lost a great worker’. Kanblong did not see Rikardo Arrangi more than two or three times. Kanblong had never seen one thing so often or a troop stone. “The truth is that it was not difficult to know anything about our partner: he wrote ‘Zeruko Argia’ every week in the great newspaper of Donostia. And what articles! With the help of a group of young writers, it filled an entire sheet called ‘Peoples and Men’, of the new peoples and men all over the world, and how to fill it up! I believe that in Euskal Herria he was the most current writer, the most Oraico, to legitimize the passage of events in the world. (…) I do not know if there has been or is a series of works like the one Rikardo Arrangi has done in ‘Zeruko Argia’.

Along with the work of Zeruko Argia, Kanblong also mentioned Jakin's in the aforementioned article, citing also Joan Mari Torrealdai and Karlos Santamaria. Rikardo Arrangi Joan Mari Torrealdai met Rikardo Arrangi firsthand in the work of Jakin magazine.

Torrealdai has recognized two merits to Rikardo Arrangi in the book Rikardo Arrangi (Jakin, 1971), which he published two years after his death. On the one hand, along with Karlos Santamaria, Torrealdai would say that Rikardo Arrangi was a worker, a tremendous worker “...incredible, always ready to work for the People”. On the other hand, thinker and rethinking. “Rikardo did not live in inertia. He was rethinking both in politics and in the Basque problem and in religion. From Erro was Euskaldun and from Erro to Hoy (…) he made a commitment to marry the vasquism and the present.”

Worker, Euskaltzale, today.

Journalist. Thinker. Rethinker...

‘Zeruko Argia’, journalist Rikardo Arrangi

As it is known from heaven, the Light of Heaven dates back to 1919, and what is evident, that is why the LIGHT that follows it celebrates its centenary. Zeruko Argia has three stages in our journey: in the first era it was founded and extended until 1936; in the second, from 1954 to 1960, monthly; the third most prosperous, which lasts from 1963 to the present, is the week. And indeed, the first issue is March 3, 1963. On the 24th of July, on the other hand, the beginning article of Arrangi’tar Rikardo, which will later have its reference section in the magazine, Erriak eta Gizonak. His first writing is Middle Eastern Barullos. “The East stays on our right if we look to the North. As for the eastern part, we call not only the distant but also the medieval, au, the Arab lands. Sun and oil in abundance. And what a fuss! What happens? Ask why it happens (…) Let’s take a quick look...”.

Since then, every week we wrote Rikardo Arrangi in Zeruko Argia. He wrote in the sections The Countries and Men and the International Time, and even created new sections: I'm young. According to Patxi Baztarrika, between 1963 and 1969, Rikardo Arrangi wrote over 300 articles in Zeruko Argia. However, he also wrote in Anaitasuna and Jakin, works of thought in Jakin. The words are of Torrealdai, of the work Herritoko leku (Jakin, 1972), where he elaborated the anthology of the writings of Rikardo Arrangi. “Rikardo was not an office nare man, who from time to time, after a good suit and adorn and a small consultation of friends, surrendered to the press, celebrating the end of the work with a dinner. Rikardo did not have time for it, lived in a hurry (as if he had witnessed the short of his own life cycle). Yes, in a hurry, driven by the hunger of the people and agitated by the search for food. It wasn't enough for him to write in journals, because Ricardo's rhythmus wasn't enough to write every month, but every week. And in the absence of the everyday, you have to do it every week.” And Rikardo Arrangi himself seems to realize this in the article Ezkertiar berriak: From 1963’Z. In Argia’n, having been the news of international politics, in these four years I have hurried to say things about the political and political fact, with the intention of always making it better, often without thinking twice, rather than saying things”. And also, again, we have to kill the god of the vasophiles. “I’m going to finish. I have reread these lines. In doing so, I've come up with the idea of writing again. It’s not possible, I don’t have time.”

Thinker, rethinker

Joan Mari Torrealdai, Joxe Azurmendi, Rikardo’s brother, Joseba, Anjel Lertxundi… More than one has approached Rikardo Arrangi’s writings to try to discover his thoughts or his style, what would be the paths he would take today. It is not, however, an easy factory, but rather a rather sinuous knot, like the difficult roads through which Rikardo Arrangi's mind walked. Rikardo Arrangi not only thinks about it, but reframes it, reformulates it, writes it, flips it or renews it. Rikardo Arrangi is Euskaldun, but his vasquity is not something fixed on the ground, but he is reflecting on what has been put, looking for folds, pulling fringes, developing from time to time the thought itself... And yet, he is writing thinking about democracy, socialism, tradition, the old and the new… Writing and, once written, questioning it at the same time, but taking risks and writing to publish them, thinking that they can help progress: freedom, nationalism, Marxism, dogmatism, socialism…

Joxe Azurmendi is the researcher who has studied and deepened the work of Rikardo Arrangi. In 1972 he wrote the Political Preamble in the book People's Witnesses, an anthology of Ricardo's journalistic work. On that occasion Azurmendi spoke to us about his political personality, his current situation and his evolution. Years later, in 1996, Joxe Azurmendi split the study on Rikardo Arrangi into two. On the one hand, his facet of journalist and essayist, and on the other, his activity in Basque – in the title of Azurmendi, Euskalgintza said the same as humanism.

Death of orthodoxy, long live the revisionists! Socialism is fashionable, we have to kill the God of the Vascophiles, those winds of the Sun… We have claimed the themes that Rikardo Arrangi remembered.

Workers and agents

Although in Zeruko Argia began working as a journalist, the resounding articles with a lot of salt and pepper – also the controversy originated – gave so much importance to Rikardo Arrangi for his reflections, works and campaigns for the literacy of the Basques. It would be said that he had that instinct. In 1971 the Euskaltzaindia Literacy Commission stated in the book Rikardo Arrangi that the reason for literacy is necessary. As the Basques were illiterate in Euskera, “Rikardo detected and analyzed this tremendous problem, but not only that, but he immediately presented us with the remedy to solve this problem: Literacy Campaign.” The Commission's proposal to Euskaltzaindia dates back to January 1966, on behalf of the Jarrai Group. The signatories were Juan San Martín, Mikel Lasa, Iñaki Beobide and Rikardo Arrangi. The Academy regards this as a good idea and also appoints Patxi Altuna as a vocal.

And the campaign was opened from people to people, and they dedicated themselves to concretizing the method, to lecturing and studying teacher training – the first in San Sebastian, in August 1967 –… Rikardo Arrangi was in military service at the time.

After performing military service, and with the pretensions ripened and insane, in January 1968 the commission made a new report to Euskaltzaindia. “Bad times are those of then. But Rikardo continues and decides to make a new organization for literacy.” And surrounding the money to help the campaign, and starting the second level of literacy, organizing an editorial -- which would be Lur -- to publish informative books, and lots of work and worries until in February 1969 the new model of organizing the literacy movement was decided. “The literacy work he had put on his own when he left us, and he continues [1971], because he left the seed planted (…) is that this important action that Rikardo has carried out and undertaken does not hide in any way, but is reinforced day by day,” said the members of the Literacy Commission and, finally, they were right.

And there, another monument, the interview that Joan Mari Torrealdai gave to Rikardo Arrangi before he died -- in the book Rikardo Arrangi, man and garaia, at the beginning of literacy, Rikardo -- about the literacy movement.
From the seed sown by him, how many.

Identity card

Rikardo Arrangi Aranburu (Andoain, 1942–Mendaro, 1969). He studied his first studies in his native town and was ordained a priest in 1953, in Saturraran and San Sebastian, until 1962. He took advantage of the summers to finish his high school studies, as the healing teachings had no official value in the street life. The following year, he studied Economic Sciences in Bilbao and, at the same time, collaborated in the magazines Zeruko Argia (Erriak eta Gizonak and Gazte naiz), Anaitasuna and Jakin. He was a professor at the Lyceum Santo Tomás in Donostia-San Sebastián and, shortly thereafter, was a member of the Pax-Christi Association. In 1964 he was appointed a corresponding member of the Basque Language Academy. That same year he was admitted to the Martutene prison in Donostia-San Sebastian, accused of belonging to EGI. In 1965 he received the Lauaxeta Journalism Award for the best team.

In 1966 he served as a military service in Spain, where he spent seventeen months in Ferrol and Cádiz. In 1968 he presented to Euskaltzaindia a second report on the return and literacy of military service. He promoted the editorial land, along with Ramón Saizarbitoria, Ibon Sarasola, Arantxa Urretabizkaia and others.

He died in a traffic accident on 10 July 1969, when he was heading to Bilbao with Ramón Saizarbitoria, to a meeting in Euskaltzaindia.

The funeral mass was held at the church of St. Martin de Tours in Andoain and is buried in the cemetery of the town.

A week after the burial, a popular mass was held in Andoain, and that is when the audio of the award-winning poem written by Gabriel Aresti to Rikardo Arrangi was broadcast: Feeling auhena. Sobbing by the death of Rikardo Arrangi.

His death strongly hit the hearts of Basques and Euskaltzales and, in part, mobilized the intellectuality of the time. His works were published shortly after the death of Rikardo Arrangi, and were, at the head of everything, the lists of Politics (Lur, 1969), Rikardo Arrangi (Jakin, 1971) and Herritoko (Jakin, 1972). In 1996, Rikardo Arrangi: man and epoch was published by Larramendi Kultur Elkartea de Andoain, collecting contributions from several authors.

In 1989, the City of Andoain awarded the Rikardo Arrangi Journalism Awards for the first time.

In 1998, the linguist and politician Patxi Baztarrika made a biography of Rikardo Arrangi in the Bidegileak (Bidegileak) collection.

In addition to this terrible audio from Aresti, which we have already walked up, there is another, truly historic, on the website of the Rikardo Arrangi Journalism Awards (although on Youtube, the speech of Rikardo Arrangi in Usurbil), where we heard Rikardo Arrangi deliver an exciting speech in 1966 in Usurbil, after eating, in tribute to bertsolari. Noaua’s local magazine published a special issue on the 50th anniversary of the sculpture in honor of Udarrangi, where you can read Rikardo Arrangi’s speech. Also called the Usurbil conference, the speech shows us the narrow paths of Rikardo Arrangi's thought. On the other hand, producer Maluta Films began last August to film with her presentation on the subject at Usurbil.

As Ramuntxo Kanblong wrote, Rikardo Arrangi “oraikoa, gaur”.

Salvation of the Basque Country and the Basque Country

(…) And our reality is that this Basque country today is not Basque, because it does not depend on the Basques, because it is not in the hands of the Basques. And it's useless to ask parents to teach Basque to their children. The Basque of goodwill will will not be saved. The cinema of Euskal Herria, the laws of Euskal Herria, will be saved at an hour when the society of Euskal Herria will be in the hands of the Basques. The rest are fake (…) We have to face our reality, we don’t go through the clouds. Only one state can save the salvation of Euskal Herria (…)

In 1966, Rikardo Arrangi dedicated an excerpt from his speech in Usurbil on the occasion of the tribute to bertsolari Udarrangi.