Did you grow up in a bilingual home? (Part I)

“So, what has your relationship with Basque been?”
Summer reflections, Part I

A few months ago, on Basque public radio, the journalist asked me a question I've carried for years:
—Did you grow up in a bilingual home?

Every time I hear it, something inside me tightens.
Because the answer is yes… and no.
Basque was everywhere and nowhere at once. In the cartoons of our childhood, in our schools, in the street signs, in the Basque plays my mother took us to with such effort, in the pieces of Basque she tried to introduce at home, for the first time in three generations.

But Basque was not present in the everyday places where identity takes root: not at family dinners, not among siblings or with our grandparents. It was a language that surrounded us, but could never fully live in us.

Every summer I return to the Basque Country, and every summer I face that contradiction again: the ancestral language I left behind, yet keep defending from afar. And each visit hands me a different mirror: in one I see what I lost, in the other what I somehow kept.

I come from a (linguistically) border town, the last historical variety to the west, only half an hour from monolingual Spain. A place where almost everyone speaks Spanish at home (91%), and Basque belongs to school, not to bloodlines.

Acquired, not inherited.
Present, yet always incomplete.
And that's where the story begins.

“Parkatu, ama”

Euskadi Irratia, 2025

— Eta, familia elebidun batean jaio zinen, edo zure harremana euskararekin... zein izan da?

— Ba, konplikatua. Izatez, etxea erdalduna da; beti gazteleraz egin dugu. (...) Barre egiten dut, ama hemen dudalako, baina bere istorioa konplikatua da, gizarte elebidunetan bezala. Berak euskara nagusitan ikasi zuen eta saiatu zen neba eta bioi transmititzen, koitaua. (...)

Eta guk: ‘euskara ikastetxerako da; etxean ez dugu nahi’. (...) Hala ere, amak jarraitu zuen: antzerkietara eraman, kulturara gerturatu... euskaragatik ahal izan zuen guztia egin zuen. Baina azkenean amore eman zuen eta gaztelerara pasa ginen. Pena.

“Sorry, mom”

— So, were you born into a bilingual household, or... what has your relationship with Basque been?

— Well, it’s complicated. Honestly, our home was Spanish-speaking; we always spoke Spanish. (...) I’m laughing because my mom is here, but her story is complicated, like in any bilingual community. She learned Basque as an adult and tried to pass it on to my brother and me, poor thing. (...)

And we were like: “Basque is for school; we don’t want it at home.” (...) Even so, my mom kept trying: taking us to plays, bringing us closer to culture... she did everything she could for Basque. But in the end she gave up, and we switched fully to Spanish. A shame.

What has your relationship with your heritage language been like? Tell me in the comments.

👉 Continue in Part II

Originally posted on Instagram on November 26, 2025: view the original post.