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Barandiarán Dead at 102 Joxe Miel Barandiarán, famous Basque researcher, ethnologist, and anthropologist, died on Saturday, December 21, 1991 in his home in Ataun in the province of Gipuzkoa. A humble, loyal, hardworking man, Barandiarán was known throughout the world for his lifetime of commitment to and research of Basque culture. Born in 1889 in the village of Ataun, Barandiarán began studying for the priesthood in 1904 and, once ordained, taught at the seminary in Gasteiz / Vitoria. Because of the Spanish Civil War, he had to flee to Iparralde in 1936, and it was there where we began his research. He became the world's leading expert on Basque folklore and mythology. In 1953 he returned to the southern Basque Country to teach at the University of Salamanca. He taught anthropology there for eleven years before moving on to the University of Irun where he continued to teach until the age of 90. Professor Barandiarán's interests were not limited by his university duties. He found time to research churches, gravestones, and caverns, and he collected oral interviews from individual Basques in which they told fables, myths, and legends from memory. The results of some of those interviews appear in the Basque Book Series volume A View from a Witch's Cave. He supported the Basque language throughout his life, to the point of running in the korrika, the race that symbolizes the fight for the language, at the age of 100. The world will not see his like again. We respectfully salute the memory of the great Barandiarán. Goian bego, aitatxi! |
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