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Basque-Speaking Areas

Half of the population of the Basque territories (54%) spoke Eskuara (Basque language) a century ago. Over the last 120 years, the percentage of Basque-speakers has gone down from 54% in 1868 to 23.7% in 1991 (Egin, 1993).

Today only 23.7% of the population of Navarre and its truncated territories of Lapurdi, Zuberoa, Araba, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa speak Basque. Basque is spoken in some provinces more than in others. Behe-Nafarroa or Lower-Navarre in Northern Basque Country is the Basque territory with a greater proportion of Basque-speakers (64.5%), followed by Zuberoa (54.7%), and Gipuzkoa (45.8%). During the last century the percentage of Basque-speakers has declined more in the south than in the north as a result of industrialization and mass immigration of Spanish-speakers.

However, during the last few years the percentage of Basque-speakers in the southern territories has not declined. Two censuses show that the proportion of Basque speakers over the total population was 21.7% in 1986 and 22.9% in 1991. This positive tendency brings hope to the struggle for the normalization of Basque. But it must be warned that the population tends to overestimate its knowledge of Basque thus, the census is inflated. It is difficult to accept, for example, that the number of Basque speakers in Araba has gone up to 25,300 from 9,700 between 1981 and 1991, or that two thirds of the Basque-speaking population knows how to write in Basque, according to the official numbers. Moreover, over the last hundred years or so the quality of spoken Basque has declined substantially. Those who claim to speak Basque (8-26%), they do it with difficulty.

Sources: Jokin Apaletegi, Euskadi en guerre (Ekin, 1987); Luis Nuñez Astrain, Opresión y defensa del euskera, (Txertoa, 1977); Manex Goyhenetche, L'opression culturelle française en Pays Basque Nord (Elkar, 1974); Marianne Heiberg, The Making of the Basque Nation (Cambridge University Press, 1989).