It’s August, and I’ve gone almost this entire month without writing a blog (oh no!). Well, August means that the entire country (continent?) is on vacation, so my excuse is that I’m doing the same. A good time to update my recurring series on the sliver of the Basque language that we have picked up and work into our daily conversations.
This post is the second of a series, to view the first post where I explain “Aupa, Eskerrik Asko, Agur,” click here. To view the second post, where I provide a few common salutations, click here.
Before I begin, the other week I quietly updated the header image for this blog with a 3D render I’m calling “Puppy in the Ikurriña Ocean,” or shall I say, “txakurkumea ikurriña ozeanoan.”
This new image shows off a bit of what I’ve learned in the world of Blender and realistic 3D rendering over the past year-plus. It also features several elements representing key characteristics of the city of Bilbao:
- The statue of Puppy from the Guggenheim.
- La Gabarra, the barge in which Athletic Club celebrated its Copa del Ray victory in 2024.
- A wavy ocean representing the maritime history of the Basque Country.
- The Ikurriña, flag of Euskal Herria.
I had originally created a, comparatively primitive version back in April 2024, in the early days of my skill-up in photogrammetry and Blender. A discerning eye should be able to pick up the differences in detail, complexity, and creativity of the newer and older versions.
Today I am writing from Hendaia, in the French Basque Country. A place where the underlying Basque-ness has been smoothed over somewhat, in favor of a less-threatening, French-er tourist experience. The French Basques have a somewhat more amicable relationship with the rest of their country than their (not) Spanish counterparts. This manifests as a pristine coastal town, with French flags, food and language, devoid of some of the grit and counterculture that you would encounter across the river Bidasoa.
We like it here, as we needed the peace and quiet of Hendaia as a getaway from the nine days of partying and artificial fires that we would have experienced over the last week in Bilbao, this having been Aste Nagusia. Having been in Euskadi for the past 20 months, however, makes Hendaia feel a bit buttoned-down; the beach has signs posting all the rules against food and beverages, you can’t order pintxos at the bar, and I have not seen one graffiti tag declaring INDEPENDENTZIA. Thankfully, the ferry runs every fifteen minutes back to the incredible town of Hondarribia in Gipuzkoa, for when we need our fix of the Euskadi life.
Today’s Words
Today I’m going to hit a few words that are fitting for our current setting and mood over the last week. Where in past iterations of this blog, I touched on some the most common salutations, these are a bit more nuanced, and speak to some unique characteristics of Basque daily life. Once again, I accompany each with a story of how we came to know their meaning.
Kaixo
I’ve alluded in previous posts about the Euskara word for hello. Despite this being the most basic point of entry for basically any language, the “official” term in Euskara has barely entered our lexicon, being mostly replaced by aúpa, a word with no formal meaning, or, surprisingly, agur.
Kaixo is Euskara for hello, officially. It’s never been one that we use every day, however, in our experience, when we do hear it the speakers tend to fall into one of two groups:
- Extranjeros that have read a blog post (not mine) telling them that this is the word they should learn, and will use it at every storefront they enter, despite not knowing even one other Euskara expression.
- Actual Basques, who will use it when greeting someone they have known for their entire life, before conversing entirely in Euskara.
We fall into neither category, and that to us makes it feel a bit inauthentic for us to use it. We do use egun on, which is the Euskara equivalent to buenas dias, which is more fitting with how Spanish speakers greet each-other anyway. That or the aforementioned aupa and agur, kaixo is just never a word that we use, unless someone says it to us first…
Which brings me to a third category, which is one individual camarero at Negresko, a bar we frequent in Plaza Nueva. He routinely addresses us with kaixo when we enter, and in keeping with the second category, will immediately rattle off complete paragraphs to us in Euskara if we say kaixo in response. This has been his running joke for some time, as he knows full well that we know, umm, twelve words in Euskara. This same guy, by the way, speaks fluent English, and we’ve heard him speak comfortably in French as well (and Spanish, but that goes without saying). Add that up, and we know he is fluent in at least four languages. I guess if you know Euskara, one of the most difficult languages in the world, all other languages are simple by comparison.
Kuadrilla
One of the themes of language here is that there are an assortment of words that are undeniably Basque, but may or may not be officially Euskara. This is one that I am not sure of, as it clearly sounds a bit like the diminutive form of cuadra, in castellano, indicating something like a small city block. Given its usage in País Vasco, “small city block” is something close to its meaning. Here is what Google Translate gives as the direct translation from Euskara.
Getting closer, but not exactly telling the whole story. Kuadrilla are, roughly, the group of children that you meet on your first day of school, and by Basque tradition, the tight-knit group of friends you will have for the rest of your life. My personal translation in English would be “cohort,” but any single word is selling short the significance of the term.
I first became aware of Kuadrilla via an American woman who I was attending intensive Spanish language classes with. She had married a Basque man, who had lived for 35 years in San Francisco as an architect. They moved back to Bizkaia, and after all those years, he still spent most of his time with his kuadrilla. Also, if it’s not enough to have a lifelong friend group, it’s apparently commonplace to go to the same university, and take on the same or similar careers, so many of his kuadrilla are also architects or engineers.
Kuadrilla have fixed boundaries, and are notoriously impenetrable. While many of us had close friends groups in our high school or college days, those would tend to be fluid. Some friends were closer than others, and the distinction of who is in and who is out was a matter of who you asked. Not kuadrilla; to reiterate, a Basque man or woman gets joined to a group of ten or so peers from a young age, and those same individuals are their kuadrilla for eternity.
That is not to say that they do not make new friends. However, the Basques will make the separation clear; “while I may have known Jose for twenty years, Antxon is in the kuadrilla.” This does give the Basque Country a reputation as a place where it is hard to fit in, people are kind, but it is a near impossibility for an outsider to be welcomed to the same degree as a local. I’ve heard it’s even harder for young people who may be trying to date, first because fellow single people will tend to travel in packs, and second, if you happen to break the ice, that person you are trying to court has the equivalent of ten older brothers to shut you down.
All that said, what kuadrilla represent are a loyal bond that is truly unique to the Basque culture.
Zirimiri
This is another word that may not be officially Euskara, in fact, sirimiri shows up in the Spanish translation on Google, but not in Basque (I updated this word after original writing as I discovered, fittingly, that for the Basque translation you need to swap the “s” for a “z”). I’d go out on a limb though to say, where zirimiri is a (not quite) daily part of life in Bilbao, there are probably a fair amount of Spaniards who have never experienced it in their life. It’s sort of a favorite word here, one of the more common names for bars and cafes. In this example, from Hendaye, you can also see that it gets adapted for varying regional spellings.
Unlike some of the other examples where Euskara words require a bit more context than a simple 1-to-1 translation, zirimiri is perfectly clear cut. I happened to learn it from the maestra of my Spanish class, on a day where it started to rain through an open window during the class, and she remarked “ah, es zirimiri.”
Zirimiri is, specifically, the light and persistent drizzle (or lloviznar in Spanish), that accompanies daily life in Bilbao during the late fall and early spring. Not a thunderous storm or downpour, just a little mist, almost like a dense fog that hangs in the air. Because of the high humidity in the Basque Country, zirimiri is an ever-present feature once the temperature drops below a certain point.
Hondortza
On the other side of the weather spectrum, and as I write this from the Côte Basque at the tail end of August, we find hondortza. Skipping the suspense, as it’s a word that has always been contextually obvious to me, hondortza is beach.
I do have a pair of notable, hondortza-related anecdotes, both relating to the fact that, like so many Basque things, the beaches here have long and difficult to pronounce names.
At the beginning of our time in Bilbao, we mostly went to a beach called La Salvaje, meaning “the wild” in castellano. This is, naturally, the local nudist beach, which is not by intention (and I should mention, not a requirement), but at the time it was the only beach we were aware of being metro-accessible. Eventually we realized that there were multiple smaller beaches, closer to Bilbao, connected to the primary suburb of Getxo.
We didn’t initially know the names of these beaches, so would refer to them by the metro stations we used to reach them. This was, as we found out, not acceptable according to the bartenders at our local bar, in part because one of them, Ereaga hondortza, is the namesake of the bar itself. We were also informed that in the case of another local beach that we tended to refer to as Bidezabal, that we must refer to it by its proper name of Arrigunaga hondortza, which we continue to struggle to pronounce.
The second anecdote relates to how street signs are presented in Bilbao, which is also how beach names are written. It is convention in castellano to place the name of the street after calle, while Euskara places the name of the street before the corresponding kalea. For example, a lively block near our apartment is Ledesma Street, or “Calle Ledesma Kalea” on a street sign. Closing the loop with beaches, you may expect to see “Playa Arrigunaga Hondortza.”
There is a local joke, which we learned from a couple who had joined us in Hendaia, about tourists who have no idea about the Euskara part of the street sign. The story goes that it’s common for tourists to ask for directions to a place like “Calle Ledesma Kalea,” which to a local is like saying you want to go to “Ledesma Street Street.” The joke is to direct someone to the fictional “Calle Kalea” and “Playa Hondortza,” which is of course meaningless; every street is a kalea, and every beach is a hondortza. Tourist beware, I suppose.
Komunak
No hondortza is complete without komunak. This is one of the rare words in Euskara that actually does trace to a Latin root, in this case, the “common” sound reflecting that it is part of a common, or public space.
Komunak is the word for public bathrooms. Note the plural, as the “k” ending in Euskara is the equivalent of a “s” ending in English or Spanish. One of the things we have a deep appreciation for in Bizkaia is the quality of public services, and if you visit a hondortza here, you may reliably find some clean and unlocked komunak, all seasons of the year.
Wrapping Up
As I mentioned at the start, this is the third post in this series, if you want to learn a bit more, you can check out the first or second batch of Euskara words that we include in our daily conversations. With the inclusion of new words in this edition of the blog, my dictionary thus far:
| Euskara | English |
|---|---|
| Aupa | Hey, or go (team) |
| Eskerrik Asko | Thank you |
| Agur | Goodbye |
| Ongi Etorri | Welcome |
| Egun On | Good Morning |
| Gabón | Good Night |
| Kaixo | Hello |
| Kuadrilla | Cohort |
| Zirimiri | Drizzle |
| Hondortza | Beach |
| Komunak | Public Bathroom |
I mentioned at the top that I have created a second generation of the header banner for the “We are not in Spain” blog. A few people have asked us why we call it that, or if it’s a typo, as in, we are in Spain. Well, in part, it’s a bit of a tongue-in-cheek reference to me having registered this domain as DC Engineer, and my company as DCDC LLC back when we still lived there. I sort of had a half-baked idea that presenting myself as an American might pull higher rates as a freelancer (the reality is it doesn’t, time zones and language are bigger factors). Half-baked though, as I never really had any intention of pretending I was anywhere except within the political boundaries of Spain.
I’m sure I’ve noted before, the expression is a reflection on the ethos of being Basque, and particularly on the Spanish side. Nearly five decades of fascist rule in Spain left the residents of Euskadi feeling marginalized, and fostered a mistrust of the government and movement toward separatism.
Beyond politics, this created a rebellious spirit, pride in local culture, and appreciation for true freedom, that is a big part of what drew us here in the first place. Within politics, the Basques have gained an outsize influence in parliament that they have leveraged toward increased autonomy. Betting is also a big part of the culture here, and the Basques have made a bet on themselves that they can apply that autonomy towards building the best public services in the world, particularly schools and hospitals (and also, komunak). We have direct experience with the latter.
Back when I first reformatted the banner, I wrote a caption that we were here in Bilbao on a one year visa. We have since extended that visa through the beginning of 2027. Longer if we have any say in it. I must admit, there is a draw for us to be back in DC, not quite a sense of homesickness, but more of a feeling that we should be there so we can make a more direct contribution to the community where we met and lived for so long. For now, we’ll see where the next year takes us, but rest assured, we are not in Spain.