Baserri

A baserri (Basque pronunciation: [bas̺eri]; Spanish: caserío vasco; French: maison basque) is a traditional half-timbered or stone-built type of housebarn farmhouse found in the Basque Country in Northern Spain and Southwestern France. The baserris, with their gently sloping roofs and entrance portals, are highly characteristic of the region and form a vital part in traditional Basque societal structures. They are also seen to have played an important role in protecting the Basque language in periods of persecution by providing the language with a very dispersed but substantial speaker base.

The term baserri is derived from the roots basa "wild" and herri "settlement" and denotes a farmstead not located in a village or town. People who live on a baserri are referred to as baserritarrak, a term which contrasts with kaletarrak (street people), i.e., people who live in a town or city.

The present-day term baserri in Basque has a fairly restricted meaning, denoting the building and its occupants, especially in the Gipuzkoan dialect. Originally, however, it denoted the building (still called in some places baserri-etxea 'baserri house'), its dwellers and the whole estate. The originally wide connotation of the term is related to the inherent ambiguity of the Basque word herri which can be translated as "land", "home", "people" or "settlement" depending on the context.

In Spanish, mostly the term caserío vasco is used but note that a caserío may also denote an entire settlement in parts of the Spanish speaking world. In French, the term maison basque is commonly encountered, although this overlaps to some extent with the Basque concept of etxea (the house).

Overall, they are almost non-existent in the flatter terrains of Álava and central and southern Navarre (Ager Vasconum). These areas went through a more thorough period of Romanisation, in which the ancient Roman provided the grounds for the new small population clusters and villages that dotted the whole region at the turn of the first millennium, after Muslim raids stopped. They are often named after an old landowner, e.g. Barbarin, Andoin, Amatrain, etc. In Navarre, parts of Álava and parts of the Northern Basque Country, baserris often form rather spaced out settlements, but virtually never wall-to-wall to minimise fire risks. Baserris in Gipuzkoa and Biscay on the whole are solitary buildings, but generally within view of another baserri.

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