Imanol Larrea: "What has happened with Basque is a miracle, but it is not enough"

BarcelonaFrom Catalonia, we observe with attention how Euskera has rejuvenated its speaker pyramid thanks to the school, but the language is far from being majority in the streets. Imanol Larrea is the director of the Soziolinguistika Klusterra, the research and revitalization center for Euskera that is financed with public and university funds and thanks to pro-language entities. A sociologist and doctor in communication from UPF, he is a great connoisseur of the Catalan reality – he lived in Catalonia from 2008 to 2015: he speaks Catalan perfectly – because he did his thesis here, worked in linguistic reception, and has collaborated with Catalan research groups. He now dedicates all his efforts to creating knowledge about Euskera to outline policies that will lift Basque out of a worrying stagnation. From June 17 to 20, he participates in the Forum on Linguistic Diversity, organized by Linguapax International, with dozens of experts to analyze the global linguistic diversity crisis and how to reverse it.

Catalan is experiencing unprecedented minoritization and a crisis of use, with 42% of habitual Catalan speakers. What is happening in the Basque-speaking territories?

— It depends. There is great diversity among the three administrative territories and also within each territory. But we are not doing well: we have been losing territory for a couple of centuries where there was a single majority language, which was Basque. From the sixties and seventies until recently we have experienced a certain revival of the language, but now we are no longer managing to keep the graphs of speakers and language use going up. In recent years, the use of Basque has stagnated at 13%.

According to the latest surveys, three out of four young people (from 16 to 24 years old) know Basque, whereas thirty years ago it was the other way around, only one out of four young people understood it.

— Yes, and this continues to happen, but not in all territories and not on the scale that would be desirable to reach a healthy sociolinguistic situation. We have very positive factors, but mixed with very negative factors.

Let's start with the positives.

— In terms of speakers, we are increasing, thanks mainly to the school and the Basque Autonomous Community, and also to Iparralde [the Northern Basque Country]. Family transmission is positive: people who speak Basque as a first language speak it to their children. When it is the second language, it is often transmitted along with Spanish, as happens in Catalonia. We have gained areas of language use, such as schools, public administration, and certain limited areas of the workplace: these are places where forty years ago Basque was never spoken. Not to mention higher education, the cultural world, literature, the internet, where we come from nothing.

And the negative factors?

— Whenever we say that we have gained a presence in a certain area, we must add: but it is not enough. I would say that it is our destiny for the next century; in a hundred years we will not change it. We may be able to say, with luck, that we have gained something, but we will always add: it is not enough to reach an acceptable health situation.

What would be an acceptable situation today for Basque?

— The minimum would be for Basque speakers to be able to use the language in any field, in any situation. Here we call it "comfortable use of the language". Because you go to public administration and you have to wait fifteen minutes because the person who knows Basque has gone to have a coffee and it turns out that when they arrive their level is not acceptable. Or you go to a restaurant and they look at you badly. Or in court. An ideal situation that is set as an objective here is the universalization of the knowledge of Basque, as in Catalonia you have of Catalan [knowledge of Basque in the Basque Country stands at 36.2% of the population, Catalan is understood by 93% of the population of the Principality].

Spoiler: you already know that this does not guarantee the use of the language by those who know it, nor the comfortable use by those of us who speak it.

— This does not guarantee everything, but in any case, it would be an advance and it is far from being achieved. One of our problems is the quality of the speakers.

What does it mean?

— We have an increase in the number of speakers coming out of school, but we see that, especially in areas where the social presence of Basque is quite limited, the linguistic competence of these speakers is very limited. Can they speak the language? Yes. Can they use it in any situation? No. Are they used to it? No. A point comes when these speakers stop speaking it. There are authors who say that our main weakness is knowledge. Because all Basque speakers are also Spanish speakers, and the percentage of people who speak Basque better than Spanish is very low. If everyone is capable of speaking Spanish and, furthermore, many Basque speakers speak better in Spanish and feel more comfortable in it, it is normal for these people to end up choosing Spanish if there are no very special conditions of a very favorable environment or extra motivation.

The problem is that you come from very low down. Did Francoism practically extinguish the social use of Basque?

— Exactly. The surprise isn't that some young people from the Bilbao area go to school in Basque and then don't use it. No. The surprise is that there are still thousands of people who use this language. The great mystery is that this language is still alive! I am from a small town in Gipuzkoa and I saw families where the children no longer spoke Basque, even though their parents were Basque speakers, even in the areas of highest Basque density. Forty or fifty years have passed and currently this would be very strange. So what has happened with Basque is a miracle, congratulations to everyone!, but it is not enough. It is an effort that we will have to continue making for decades. And you too.

The sociolinguist Avel·lí Flors-Mas once told me that the work of revitalizing a language never ends. Perhaps we had the feeling that we already had it and we relaxed.

— We have never reached this point. Due to two very important factors. Firstly, because the starting situation was much worse in all territories. And secondly, because the policies applied have not been so decisive either. We would love for ETB1 to be equivalent to TV3 in programming and audience numbers! We have only achieved immersion in recent years; for years we had model A and B, which did not manage to make students bilingual, and now we find that model D also does not provide an adequate level of linguistic competence. Because school alone is not enough to reach B2, if afterwards the entire environment operates in Spanish and a little in English.

It happens to us the same.

— Unlike Catalonia, here the importance of social movements has been and continues to be very great, and that is very positive. We cannot leave everything in the hands of the administration. The motivation of speakers and of society is very important. We are a very small minority, and if there isn't a social movement working in all the towns, in all the neighborhoods, everywhere, it's impossible to get anywhere. I would say that for this reason the sociolinguistic situation in Iparralde is better than in Northern Catalonia, for example.

Model D, in which Basque is the medium of instruction, has managed to be the majority in 80% of cases. Why?

— In the Basque autonomous community and to some extent in the French Basque Country – because in Navarre, model D has not gained traction – a social imaginary has been created, a generalized opinion that says: we will make our children learn Basque and thus we will save ourselves problems later, that they get the degree and can work wherever they want. There are many people who have had the experience of trying to learn Basque as adults and it has been very difficult for them. And, furthermore, it no longer creates ideological rejection.

Has funcionado para euskaldunizar a los jóvenes?

— During the early periods and in environments where the language had an important social presence, it was achieved that the children of non-Basque-speaking families ended up at 14 years of age speaking Basque just like their classmates who came from Basque-speaking families. With the generalization of model D, what we see is that in primary school they use Basque much more than in secondary school. The index of Basque use in school is decreasing over time. The most widespread interpretation is that the students we now have in model D are very different from those we had ten or twenty years ago, when they mainly came from Basque-speaking families. This is causing the efficiency of model D to decrease.

And is model D questioned for this reason?

— There are those who question the model, and some attempts have been made to group Basque-speaking students, but the difference is not clear. Above all, what is requested is that other ways be sought to introduce the language into the lives of these young people.

That is to say, the solution is not within the school but outside.

— Within the school we need changes. Basque cannot be taught like English is taught. Learning Basque and then being able to use it, or learning English to travel or work is totally different, and the difference is sociolinguistic. The teaching staff and the students must be clear about this. It is becoming clear that school is essential, but school alone cannot do everything. It is not enough to send children to school in Basque; they will not start speaking it automatically.

Is Basque cool? Are there new role models for young people?

— Yes, there are some areas where it is cool, but not cool enough. There is a quite recognized phenomenon of people returning to speak Basque at 18 in a conscious way. In our case, especially in areas with limited presence of Basque, the use of the language is associated with a conscious decision by the speaker. This requires energy that not everyone has and is not socially sustainable. It should be automatic. The revitalization of a language is an intrinsically very difficult task and if you look at the world, how many successful cases do we know that have gone through a long period of minoritization and are now in good health?

Good question. What examples are there?

— They are usually linked to important political changes. This does not mean, as we already know, that independence is a panacea for the language. Let's look at Ireland: independence yes, language recovery no. But in Finland, on the other hand, independence yes and language recovery too. Although it was the majority language in society, which is not our case. The language situation is very specific to each place: what they have done in Israel is not applicable here, even what is done in Catalonia may not be applicable to the Balearic Islands, or what works for Girona does not work for Barcelona. What do we have left, Quebec? If we don't have the tools or a state like France to support the language. You can't even study sociolinguistics here. You can end up being a philologist and not know anything about sociolinguistics.

What are you missing?

— We would need more decisive, braver linguistic policies with a very solid knowledge base. In the Basque autonomous community, we have a Parliament with an absolute majority of parties that are in favor of the language; it seems strange that this political situation is not being used to make a qualitative leap. In all sectors, from public administration to the social movement, we are in a standstill or stagnant situation and we need a new revival. What is still not clear is how we will do it. Until now, our immigration rates have been quite low, but the forecasts are that they will rise in a sustained and significant way.

A crucial topic. In the Basque territories, there are 15% foreigners and 15% born abroad. In Catalonia, we have 25% foreigners plus 15% born in the Spanish state. How do you foresee this being linguistically tackled in terms of growth, considering the Catalan precedent?

— The figures here are much smaller than in Catalonia and the production system is quite different, because the weight of tourism is much less. But the services, and especially the most precarious ones, are occupied by immigrants. Perhaps we are fifteen years later than Catalonia, but thousands of people arrive here and we are doing almost nothing, it is not given the political importance it has, and we run the danger of arriving too late and provoking xenophobic reactions of rejection of these people. Furthermore, the basic sociolinguistic situation is very different from that of the Basque Country and Catalonia, and the linguistic distance with Spanish is much greater, so that if you know how to speak Spanish, in a short time you can come to understand and speak Catalan, but not Basque.