Being is doing. This is what the Durango Fair says this year, and it is true, at least in the case of the fair itself and taking into account Euskal Herria. This edition is already the 59th edition of the Azoka, and the fact that each year is celebrated shows that the Durango Fair is a way to make a Basque nation.

The name and being of the fair have been changing, but they have set the course. In 1965, when it was founded, in the poster of the “Feria del libro y disco vasco”, then the name has been reduced, the Durango Fair, but it has been expanded and also called the Plaza de la Cultura. In recent years, the name is summed up in the acronym DA, but the content is expanding and deepening, determining the direction.

What does Durango bring this year? I think there are going to be new developments that will allow us to take a step forward. He has jumped from the book and from the album to different areas of Basque culture with the twenty-first century, but now I would say that he is about to make a leap beyond the cultural sphere, and I will try to explain it.

In fact, the Durango Fair can host a pre-training and pre-preparation laboratory for the future of the Basque community. From books and records, it has spread to the audiovisual field, to new technologies, to different screens and platforms, and to artificial intelligence, which also knocks at the door. In the field of Basque culture, the fair has become a habitus, but it is still a laboratory, in a specific space and in a limited number of days. It has demonstrated that the Basque culture is capable of creating its own cultural polysstema, with the essential elements for it: creators, institutions, repertoires, products and market, and the last, but not the smallest, the host cultures.

The laboratory test results are positive, yes. But now you have to jump into everyday life. Throughout the Basque Country, the first step is to create a suitable habitat for the Basque community. That will be the decisive step. And what will this habitat be? The Basque nation itself. The organization of the Basque democratic nation must be done. And I think this year, Durango is going to start moving in that direction. Why do I say this?In recent years the program of the fair has acquired a very large dimension, with a broad spectrum of poly-system culture, and this year will be presented in the environment of the fair areas that announce the leap from culture to the national organization.

For the first time, the United Nations National Association will make a stand available on 5 December and will make presentations of its work on 6 December. In addition, on 7 December the afternoon the Basque citizen organization Herrian Euskaraz has called for a mobilization to make explicit and forceful the Bat Gara process that is taking place at noon throughout Euskal Herria. “To live in Basque we need the Republic of the Basque Country.”

It seems that we have departed from the book and album fair to the creation of the Basque cultural polysystem, from the habitus to the creation of its own habitat and from the national organization of Euskal Herria that goes from the success of Durango. In Durango we will see if that is the case.