In Vitoria-Gasteiz, we enter the Casa del Euskera Oihaneder and are surprised by the investment we have made in infrastructure. Haven't you invested in thinking?

I do not think so. In research on Euskera, which is my area, very little has been invested, and, of course, very little research has been done. Sociolinguistics and the rest, and teaching itself, are not priority areas.

You, in the research group Elebilab at the UPV, have investigated it.

But we look at the size and importance of the subject, and we've almost done nothing. In the Department of Education of the Basque Government, for example, daily tasks are dealt with. In the Department of Health, on the contrary, much more is being done. How many doctors are researching. Which is cancer, which are rare diseases, which are bigger, which is food… Our education has great peculiarities, we are able to be pioneers in the world, but where do we have researchers? Who investigates the consequences of joint teaching in Basque and Spanish? We investigated it, but seriously. Some and others meet from time to time, but there is no deep line of research.

And without a line of research, you couldn't move forward.

We must devise our own means of research. No one else than us can do it. There is the research centre, Ikerbasque, and it is OK, but its work has no impact, nor any consequence, on the teaching of the Basque country. The same could be done in Salamanca. Well, there you don't have bilingual, and here you do, and the bilingual is a very interesting topic of research, regardless of the two languages of that bilingual. We have good researchers, but investigating whether this or that happens in the brain, or knowing that the separation between phonemes is done before or after, does not help us to release the knots that the learning of Euskera has today. These studies, for example, do not tell us anything about the training of teachers, or about whether things should be done differently in school, or about the teaching of the Basque Country with no consequence, nor do they tell us why the one who knows the Basque language, if he knows, at least, speak in the Basque language. Who is analyzing this gap? There's hypothesis, yes, but who's really doing the research?

Did you speak as crudely as now before entering the portrait?

I've lost shame for years. And years and retirement contribute to taking shame even further. But I’ve spoken before… I’ve had a hard time in academic life. So what was our department? The other day, they said to me, “You were a satellite. You did work differently from others.” And doing jobs other than others is an uncertainty, and sometimes I discarded them without doing some jobs, out of fear, because I didn't dare. And, on the other hand, nobody was interested!

You have just said that the road must be made by ourselves. Have you tried it?

I had some questions and went to Geneva to get answers. But there, I didn't find an answer either. They did not investigate any bilingual teaching. They taught me about language in Geneva, about the teaching of language, the training of teachers… many things I came here and I have adapted and applied, but there they did not care about bilingualism. Many languages are spoken in Switzerland, but the common Swiss is considered to be a monolingual. This surprised me enormously. There I was back in 2012 -- I had a sabbatical year at the UPV -- teaching the course, and I said: “Here you are all bilingual, of course.” And they: “No, no. Not only do we know French, we also know German, but we are monolingual.” That's what they said. Furthermore, among the objectives of the Swiss is not to have the ability to do all things in both languages.

Right here, or what? All in Basque, all in Spanish...

Here we were introduced the model of immersion, as it could not be otherwise, and the sauces with the Catalans! Around 1976-77, the Catalans told us: “But how do they teach children in a language they don’t know? You are donkeys!” But if we didn't do that, they didn't learn it. We had no way out. There was a time when this was a great topic for debate. It was a psychological principle, that the child should be taught in his/her own language. We, on the other hand, taught everyone in Basque. And there they came, we created traumas, we did what the Spaniards did… It was not easy to trace back those beliefs, that is, to explain at a theoretical level what we did in practice. But we theorize it, and today nobody is discussing that, but before...?

What do you see?

I think I was lucky. When I started at the UPV/EHU, the academics at our university estimated that the research I did, such as the language learning of bilingual children, was not their priority concern. I had to fight for that space to be respected, I had to do strength, but I've had very little strength in college. In our field, we have worked two, not more than three. Luis Mari Larringan and I, then Marijo Ezeizabarrena, now also Ibon Manterola and Leire Diaz de Gereñu… But that cannot be compared to the weight that the history of the Basque Country has in the section of Linguistics and Basque Studies, for example.

We have seen you in close contact with foreign experts.

Yes. There was a time when there was no research in the Basque Country. Very little in the Spanish state. In 1993, for example, when Andoni Barreña read the thesis, he had Jurgen Meisel on the jury. Meisel is a respected linguist around the world. It was he who started the study of bilingual children who study French and German. In addition, it has done a very fine job. Well, in 1993, in the context of Barreña's thesis, Meisel told us: “With this thesis, in Spain they will learn more about the empowerment of languages and the empowerment of Spanish than through all the research done so far”. Said by Meisel. We started doing this kind of very fine work here, much earlier than in Spain.

What did Unesco Etxea give you and the work on the languages of the world?

Sensitivity to linguistic diversity in the world. We entered this project in the year 2000, and we learned a lot. Later, Unesco Etxea abandoned the theme and fell on the chair. There it is too… In 1998, I was in Bolivia, at a conference on bilingual education. So I started to see how bilingual teaching was done in other minority languages, and especially in indigenous languages. And there's a horrible hole. It has been 40 years, especially in Latin America, in what is called bilingual teaching, and they have achieved almost nothing. Do not be completely ashamed of speaking your language. Moreover, they have “managed” to learn as soon as possible in Spanish, but they have achieved new speakers in their indigenous languages, not conditions for the development and maintenance of their language… A tremendous failure. And I believe that the Basques, despite our weaknesses, are helping to change that situation, especially with the work on Garabide’s linguistic cooperation.

“A tremendous failure.” It's not sweet.

It's terrible. In Mexico, for example, they make proposals on indigenous languages, create organizations, hire teachers… But the thing is not well stated, because in part the indigenous communities are not the axis of the project, because they do not have autonomy to carry out the projects. That is why we have made progress. Because we have had the means in our hands. But the work we've done, and nobody else, and there's no other way, the community has to take responsibility and have models. And unfortunately, in the case of indigenous languages, they do not have models either.

However, language is cooperation.

The Spaniards, for example, have been donkeys. They have done nothing but defend their language. On the contrary, Germans, Dutch, Danes, Norwegians… have invested a lot of money in cooperation projects related to education in indigenous peoples and even language. But they've never proposed a model of immersion. I do not think you can imagine that in Quechua you can organize all the teaching. Not 40 years ago. And yet those countries in northern Europe are an example of educational cooperation. However, as soon as they entered education, they realized that indigenous people had their own languages. And then they began to invent models like “bilingual intercultural education.” But in the bilingual schools that have been launched in Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala… it is shown only in model A here. A German, for example, does not see a minority language as the axis of teaching. Minority language says yes, but teaching always has to be in a “big” language. They say no to the immersion model, they can't. “And why not? Why can’t you?” I’ve faced. What Suárez told us at another time was not possible! And look how far we've come! The truth is that you cannot believe that the road we have travelled…

Is it amazing?

Yes. Is this competition that we have achieved at the level of formal language? Not even dreaming. Through the formal language we have developed, we can express everything. People write beautifully, we have teachers who also teach masterfully... Another thing is what happens outside of school, on the street, with that language. But at the level of formal language, we have made tremendous progress. We, in our time, had none of that: a little bit of church language and literature, nothing else. This situation was a long way off and we have succeeded. Today everything is written well and precisely.

What are you proud of? What are the lights, what are the shadows?

Proud, of many things: we created a research group; as far as Euskera is concerned, we work indefinite fields; we started and encouraged research; we analyzed the empowerment of language and the learning processes of multilingual students; we underlined the importance of the discursive study on the teaching of languages; we promoted the methodology for the analysis of Euskera's learning, we helped in the realization of theses… I have had the opportunity to do what I did not do. I am proud of that.

What do you regret?

I have not managed to give this issue its importance in our department, in Linguistics and in the Basque Studies of the UPV. I have not had the strength to get our issue out of the secondary situation. And I don't know if my successors will. It's not easy. Things haven't changed much since I arrived, at least not in that. In the Basque Country, and in Spain, the school, the language of children and similar subjects have no value. And, therefore, those who have to put money into research projects do not give it value either. I remember that, when the Basque Government was created, being an advisor [Pedro Miguel] Etxenike, the Research Directorate launched a special line on bilingual education. That disappeared a long time ago. We have to compete with everyone else, despite the significance of the field. Bilingualism, multilingualism, linguistic empowerment -- they don't have the priority or the help they need in research.