Last week a bird from Gorka Bereziartua drew my attention: “That myth that in Gipuzkoa everyone does it in Basque with a kind of genetic naturalness is also going a little bit further in #justsayin.” I don't know what that bird caused. I linked it that same week in Argia and a week before in Alea with Edurne Azkarate in the report “Curing the Basque Country year after year in the Rioja Alavesa”: “I find some Basque identities of the peripheries that are developing very interesting: when you accept that you cannot reach that model, because you were not born there, because you are not a genetic Basque”.

Bereciartua wrote this in a collaboration on the Euskalerria radio: “The belief that the Basque language has a centre where the language is almost fully normalized is also spreading with the help of these peripheral experiences”. I do not believe (and most of the periphery neither, I believe) that there are Arcaditas living “well”, that the Basque language is a normal and natural language, I do believe that in the centre (and anywhere, but more often in the center) there are Basques who believe that they live in Arcadia, or at least in the Arcadio. And Arcadia's opinion is (ha) very bad for the normalization of Euskera. Gorka himself speaks of this in the same article: “Among those who know Euskera in my people and those who really speak there is a chasm that right now, with the resources there, with the interest that awakens the issue, with what matters to the Basques themselves, seems impenetrable.”

The Riojano Andoni Landa said in the same report about Azpeitia – where the oral use is very large – “In the bar is Berria, I don’t know how many will touch.” Those who know Basque but do not use it, or have learned in Basque but do not touch Berria, both have the conviction that they are “Euskaldunes”, not bascos, but Euskaldunes. As Bereziartua said, you don't see too many abyss when you don't read Berria, or most of the Spanish-language conversations. And if there are problems, they don't, the Basque is unified. (It is curious that in their fight against them and in the defence of the unified one, the Euskaldunberris are always taken into account, and not Berria, a film, a book, television, being able to enjoy the Internet...).

Given that the Basque language is a minority language, it requires effort from everyone, from the cultural creators yes, but also from the recipients; and some are very passive receivers, and they are the majority. A Basque majority, in a green mountainous Arcadia, who believes that the desert is on the periphery.