I've just seen the movie Gartxot, I don't know how many times, because since I'm a high school teacher in Lapurdi, I put it every year, without exception, to the students in all the schools. Despite not being the first time, I have followed as if the march of Gartxot and his son Mikelot, with his heart shrunk by such a black and sad fate, and very excited by the dignity shown by Izalzu’s bard, by the importance it gives to freedom. For me, Gartxot represents that: dignity, freedom, resistance.

It is an event/legend that Kanpion has become a narrative and that Benito has created based on singing, and that narrates a conflict between Basques and Latinos, making it clear who the defeated are and who the dominators are. The film has explicitly shown the destructive nature of the latter, their ultimate goal in ours, and the relentless brutality they use to do so. And despite the delicacy of the film, this does not at all conceal the cruelty towards us, nor does it at all ease the harsh situation in which we find ourselves. That is why, in his humble Gartxot, it seems to me to be the best film ever made about our national problem. Isn't he the only one?

The animation, aesthetic and characterization of the characters, the recognition of the value of freedom and the moral dilemma it poses around it, make Gartxot a very similar film for the youngest. Yeah, it's hard, I know. But how is it not going to be a legend that speaks of our people, of our history, of the language and of the future? I use it because I believe it can help the literacy of students about the national problem of the country, as a professor of Euskera and, above all, as a professor of Euskera, I believe that this task also belongs to me, no doubt. To help students to know the history of the Basques, to develop the capacity to contextualize our problems, to be key to critically interpreting the facts and to have the courage and intelligence to transform reality.

It's a very appropriate tool. It addresses the issue in a very serious way, giving a political dimension to the linguistic question, placing the Basque problem in the context of the subordination suffered by Euskal Herria, and also suggesting that the solution to the problems we have as Basques is totally incompatible with our situation of dependence. At least this is how I understand the meaning of the final main event that gives meaning to history: Mikelot symbolizes our future, revealing that in this situation (which is also the present) there is no choice but the death of the people. What a lesson.

The movie Gartxot should be in every house. And if it's not yet, ask the Olentzero.

But in any case, the Basques of these “new times”. It is a tendentious film, marked beforehand by the direction of our emotions and focused on sympathies and antipathies towards the characters. You know, these ethnic Basques and Manicheans. For example, because to tell you, your children will have to put Latinos and their faithful Basque collaborators on the side of the evil ones. You will have to speak seriously of the value of fraternity, of the need to build a coexistence between different, of the fundamental role of the Fray Martin and of the Lords Merits, which are the bridges to promote the knowledge to do. Of the need to adapt to the new times.

Ah, Gartxot! If you knew it.