Littérature scientifique sur le sujet « País Vasco (Spain) – Social life and customs »

In the town of Oñati (Basque Country, Spain) we find the community project of Eltzia: a public initiative aimed at enriching local cultural life through the articulation of its creative people. Eltzia is enlightening for having a model of organisation that can be related to the Basque Country’s cooperative movement, but also for showing the benefits of popular participation in culture policymaking. This research explores Eltzia as an example of democratization of cultural policy through the involvement of citizens; an expression of cultural rights that engages with how law is interpreted. Eltzia emerged from a municipal initiative and its creation was influenced by the participation of the local groups and a private company providing mediation services in social processes of community development. The analysis will focus on the contributions that are drawn from Eltzia in relation to the fields of cultural policy and socio-legal studies. El proyecto comunitario de Eltzia se desarrolla en Oñati (País Vasco, España): se trata de una iniciativa pública que tiene por objetivo enriquecer la vida cultural local a partir de la articulación de las personas con intereses creativos. Eltzia es ilustrador de un modelo de organización que se puede relacionar con el movimiento de cooperativas del País Vasco, pero que también muestra los beneficios de la participación popular en los procesos de diseño de política pública. Esta investigación explora Eltzia como un ejemplo de la democratización de la política cultural a través de la participación ciudadana; una expresión de derechos culturales que atiende a los procesos de interpretación del derecho. Eltzia surge de una iniciativa municipal y su creación fue influenciada por la participación de grupos locales y una compañía privada dedicada a los servicios de mediación en procesos sociales de desarrollo comunitario. El análisis se enfocará en las contribuciones que se derivan de Eltzia en relación con los campos de la política cultural y los estudios socio-jurídicos.

Defence date: 16 September 2002
Examining Board: Prof. Michael Keating, European University Institute (Supervisor); Prof. Jeremy MacClancy, Oxford Brookes University (External supervisor); Prof. Joseba Zulaika, University of Nevada; Prof. Bo Stråth, European University Institute
First made available online on 10 April 2018
Following the dismantling of most border controls within the European Union as a consequence of the 1985 Schengen Agreement, many communities located in border zones have had to reassess their socio-cultural, economic and legal relationships with neighbouring communities on the other side of state frontiers. This has been true, among others, for the inhabitants o f the towns of Irun and Hondarribia on the Spanish side of the Franco-Spanish frontier and o f the nearby town of Hendaia on the French side. Since the late 1980s, Irun, Hondarribia and Hendaia have sought to strengthen their relations with each other. This led, in 1999, to the launching of the Bidasoa-Txingudi Cross-Frontier Consortium - Bidasoa-Txingudi Mugaz Gaindiko Partzuergoa in Basque - formalising at the level of their municipal administrations the ties between the three towns that form the area now known as Bidasoa-Txingudi. For more than a decade, the promoters of cross-frontier co-operation in Bidasoa-Txingudi have been active in setting up cultural and social projects with the aim of encouraging the population of the three towns to develop a common sense of local belonging. This thesis will examine the ways in which the Bidasoa-Txingudi Cross-Frontier Consortium attempts to win legitimacy in the eyes of the local population, including a particular emphasis on ‘culture’. Reflecting the dominant influences of the states of which they form part, the communities on either side of the frontier operate within different social and cultural contexts. But they also share a common Basque cultural and linguistic heritage, thanks to their location in the Basque-speaking region that straddles the Franco-Spanish border at the western end of the Pyrenees. The result is an environment in which contrasting and sometimes conflicting issues of identity, nationality, language and culture mingle and interreact. This thesis is intended as a contribution to the ongoing debate in the social sciences concerning the concepts o f identity and ethnicity. It will examine the different ways in which identity, as experienced by different inhabitants of Bidasoa-Txingudi, is constructed and expressed. In doing so, it will challenge notions of fixed identity among members of groups often perceived as homogeneous. By illustrating the varying expressions of self that can be observed in the area, it will seek to build on current debates on the relationship between collective and individual identity and contribute to the analysis of relationships between culture and identity in changing border areas throughout Europe. By way of conclusion, the thesis will point to the problems and challenges associated with attempts to forge a new sense of common belonging in the complex sociocultural and political contexts of the Basque Country. By highlighting the discrepancies between the theoretical objectives of initiatives such as the Bidasoa-Txingudi Cross-Frontier Consortium and the realities of identity formation and expression at grass-roots level, it will attempt to shed light on issues of identity and selfhood in this and other border communities whose inhabitants are subject to potentially conflicting identity allegiances.