Part III of a series. Read Part I and Part II.
“Living between two mirrors”
Summer reflections, Part III
That summer, my friend Maite from my Basque Studies college group of friends got married. It was the first wedding of one of my very close friends.
Maite grew up in southern Navarre, where Basque isn't official and the environment is openly hostile to it.
Her ikastola, a parent-founded cooperative, was the only Basque oasis in sixty kilometers (~37 mi).
At the wedding, most guests spoke only Spanish. But Maite's ikastola friends and us, the Basque Studies group, knew the songs, the rhythms, and (some of) the dances.
We formed an island within the celebration. And suddenly, I found myself standing on the Basque-speaking side of the border.
For one day, I "belonged." Not to the majority,
but to the side I had always wanted to belong to.
Each summer hands me a different reflection:
In one, I'm the girl who lost something essential. In the other, the woman who managed to keep it.
One image soothes me. The other wounds me.
And that is the bittersweet truth of being "euskaldun" 'Basque speaker':
living suspended between two mirrors, between inheritance and distance, between belonging and estrangement; trying to reclaim a culture that almost slipped away, yet still insists on returning in fragments.
Eskerrik asko for reading ❤️🤍💚
Have you ever lived between two realities in the same culture? Tell me in the comments.
Originally posted on Instagram on November 30, 2025: view the original post.
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