Aberri Eguna
| Aberri Eguna | |
|---|---|
| Date | Easter Sunday |
| 2016 date | 27 March |
| 2017 date | 16 April |
| 2018 date | 1 April |
| 2019 date | 21 April |
| Frequency | annual |
Aberri Eguna ("Fatherland Day") is a holiday coinciding with Easter Sunday which has its roots in the Basque nationalist movement. It was first organised by the Basque Nationalist Party on 27 April 1932 in Bilbao, then consisting of a demonstration of some 65,000 participants which terminted at the Sabino Arana House. It has since become the unofficial Basque national holiday.
Aberri is a neologism coined by Sabino Arana based on the suffix -ba which occurs in numerous kinship terms (e.g. osaba "uncle", izeba "aunt", arreba "sister of a man" etc.) from which he fancifully deduced a putative root *aba "father". He formed numerous neologisms based on this putative word such as aberri (*aba + herri "land, people, country, settlement"), abizen "surname" (*aba + izen "name") or abenda "race" (*aba + enda "lineage"). From aberri he then went on the coin abertzale "patriot" (aberri "fatherland" + -(t)zale, a suffix denoting someone keen on something). In spite of their fanciful derivation, aberri and abertzale have found their way into general usage.
The first Aberri Eguna was held to celebrate the anniversary of the concept of political Basque nationalism as put forward by Sabino Arana in 1882, according to his own writings. Some claims suggest that the date was established after Arana's death. However, its coinciding with Easter is deliberate as it follows the motto of the Basque Nationalist Party Jaungoiko eta Lege Zaharrak "God and the Old Laws and the symbolism of the resurrection of Christ. Ideologically, it follows the examples of the older Catalan and Galician patriotic holidays, the National Day of Catalonia (from 1889 onwards) and the National Day of Galicia (from 1919 onwards). It was then celebrated in San Sebastián in 1933, in Vitoria-Gasteiz in 1934 and in Pamplona in 1935.
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