History of the Basque people

The Basque people have been living in the Pyrenees Mountains surrounding the Bay of Biscay for thousands and thousand of years. Historians and other scholars have neither determined the precise origins of the Basque people, nor have discovered all of the Basque history. The Basque might have been related to a group of people called the Vascones who lived in Northern Spain.

During the ages when the Romans were conquering many parts of Europe. The Basque were never conquered by the Romans, because the Romans had no interest in their mountainous land. Later on during the 1500s, the Spanish army conquered the Basque territory. The Spanish forces allowed the Basque to govern themselves as a community, but during the Carlist Wars in the 1800s the Basque were forced out of many of their rights.

During the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, the Basque people were treated very badly. Dictator Francisco Franco banned the Basque from speaking their native language (Euskara), and forced them to speak Spanish. During this time the Basque lost all their rights,  their governance rights and economic rights. Francisco Franco imprisoned and even killed many Basque people. In 1937 Francisco Franco told the Germans to bombed the Basque town of Guernica, this bombing killed hundreds of Basque people. In 1975 after Francisco Franco's death, the Basque people got back the right to govern themselves, but this did not fully heal their pain.

In 1979 the referendum passed the statue of Autonomy. From there Araba, Bizkaia, and Gipuzkoa joined to form the Autonomous Community of Basque Country (Euskadi). Later in 1982 the law on the reintegration and improvement of the autonomous regime in Navarre was passed,
and this established the Autonomous Community of Navarre.

In 1959, the ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna) or ( Basque Homeland and Freedom) was founded. ETA is an armed Basque nationalist organization, their main goal is to gain independence for the Basque Country. By 1968 the Eta were responsible for the deaths of over 800 people, thousands of injuries, and over a handful of kidnappings. This organization is looked at by most of the European countries as a terrorist organization.

Today the Basque people are considered one of the oldest surviving ethnic groups in Europe.

references:

http://autocww.colorado.edu/~blackmon/E64ContentFiles/GeographicalRegions/BasqueCountry.htm