Basque center

Basque centers (in Basque: euskal etxeak or eusko etxeak) are associative organizations that appeared in the end of the 19th century in cities that have really an important presence of Basque emigration, with the purpose of helping each other and keeping links with Basque culture and homeland. They are also meeting points for the Basque people who live all around the world far away from their land.

Their objective is to recover documents concerning the history of Basque exile and migration by means of research, digitalization, photographs and oral testimonies. There are more than 150 Basque Centers built all around the world. Most of them in Argentina (62 centers), near Buenos Aires. In fact, 10% of the population has a Basque origin. Juan de Garay Foundation, works hard with this community. They do genealogical search among other things.

United States of America are in the second place of the list, having more than 30 centers, and NABO organization (The North American Basque Organizations) coordinates all of them since 1973. In 2000, in the United States, there were 57,793 Basque origin people registered: 20,868 in California, 6,637 in Idaho, 6,096 in Nevada, 2,665 in Washington and 2,627 in Oregon.

There are ten Basque centers in Spain and two in France.

Apart from the Basque centers, there also exist several organizations and associations all around the world related to the Basque Diaspora. Among the most important ones, the Center for Basque Studies research area in Reno.

In the times of the European colonization of the Americas Basque institutions arose in Perú, Mexico (Colegio de San Ignacio de Loyola Vizcaínas), etc. But it was in the 19th century when they began to prepare the Basque centers that we have today. These dates also coincide with the massive emigration to America and the choice of new destinations. Most of them were travelling to Argentina and Uruguay. It is not known which was exactly the first Basque center that was created in this epoch, but it is possible to be the Basque Center of Havana, the capital city of Cuba in 1868, even though until now it was the Basque Center of Montevideo, in 1876. The certain thing is that it was a very extended phenomenon in the whole of America.

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Wikipedia