A Basque in Boise

Digital Archive at euskaletxeak.net

I love photos, especially those that remind me of family and friends who are far away. I get to participate from the distance and share with them the special moments in their lives. Six years ago, I followed Leire’s pregnancy and her son’s birth. Since then I’ve seen Aitzol grow into a soccer fanatic, a trait that has united him to my own son for life. And this summer I got to enjoy, from my cubicle at work, a little piece of my sister’s trip to Oropesa through daily photos posted to Facebook of her in the beach, her in the swimming-pool, her drinking, her eating… You get my drift.

That’s why I loved euskaletxeak.net‘s Digital Archive, whose main objective is to recover documents concerning the history of Basque exile and migration by means of research, digitalization, photographs and oral testimonies. I spent the best part of the morning the other day browsing through their collections and smiling every time I saw a familiar face. Most Basques from the Diaspora have come in contact at some point or another with Basques from other parts of the country and even the world (NABO meetings, Jaialdis in Boise, or Gaztemundu trips), and maybe you didn’t realize part of your trip was captured there.

There are almost 20,000 photos posted on the site, organized by collection, category, country, tag, Basque club or user, for your convenience.

As long as you are there, check out the Digital Urazandi Project, an initiative of the Directorate of Relations with Basque Communities of the Basque Government which main purpose is to compile as many issues as possible of the different Basque magazines and periodical publications that were produced mostly in America, from the XIX century on. This complements the collection of books Urazandi , that gathers the history of the Basque Clubs.

Thanks for passing by: ↓

Steven Roosevelt Mark Bieter

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