Basque History of the World (9 page)

The
Santa María
, one of the ships used for Columbus’s first voyage, in 1492, was probably built by Basques. Among its crew were numerous Basques, including the boatswain Chanchu, who died on the voyage; the shipwright Lope de Erandio; and a carpenter from Lequeitio named Domingo. Among the Basques on the
Pinta
were two Guipúzcoans. Columbus’s second voyage was organized in Vizcaya by two Basques, shipowner Juan de Arbolancha and naval commander Iñigo de Artieta. For that voyage, six Basque ships were built and ready to sail from Bermeo, in July 1493, with Basque pilots Lope de Olano and Martín Zamudio and many Basque crewmen. One of the ships, with eighty-five men, was outfitted by Juan Pérez de Loyola, the future Saint Ignatius’s oldest brother. In 1494, Columbus’s third voyage was also manned by Basques, and in 1502, the fourth included the
Vizcaina
, a ship out of Guetaria with a Basque pilot and many Basque crewmen.

Juan de La Cosa, a Basque explorer usually known as Juan Vizcaíno, which in the language of the time meant “Juan the Basque,” was probably with Columbus on his first voyage and definitely on the 1493 second voyage. He continued to explore the Caribbean basin and in 1500 drew the first map of the world to include the Americas. In 1509, he was killed by tribesmen in what is now Colombia. Another Basque to be dubbed Vizcaíno, Sebastián Vizcaíno, was one of the early explorers of the California coast, exploring San Diego Bay, discovering Monterey, and sailing north of San Francisco Bay, giving California many of its present-day names.

Magellan, it is commonly taught, was the first man to circumnavigate the globe. But this is contradicted by the other well-known fact about Magellan: that he was killed on his voyage by tribesmen in the Philippines. The expedition with five ships and 200 men, of which at least 35 were Basque, left Seville in August 1519 under the command of Magellan, Ferñao de Magalhães, a tough and burly Portuguese in the service of Spain. Only three ships made it to the Philippines. At Cebu, Magellan waded ashore with a few dozen men to attack a force of 1,500 tribesmen, enemies of a local sultan with whom he had made an alliance. He did not even bring his ship’s cannons into firing range. When it became clear that the attack was a disaster, he stood with a handful of men to cover the retreat of his forces and was overwhelmed and slashed to death.

Juan Sebastián de Elcano from an engraving by L. Fernández for “Portraits of illustrious Spaniards” commissioned by the Calcografía Nacional, 1791-1814. (Untzi Museoa, San Sebastián)

He had lost only eight of his men in the engagement. But by the time the expedition left the Philippines, fighting and starvation had reduced the crew to 110, and they scrapped one ship for lack of crew. Two continued, the
Trinidad
and the Guipúzcoan-built
Victoria
, under the command of Juan Sebastián de Elcano, a Basque from Guetaria, who learned his trade first on fishing boats and later, exploring the coast of Africa.

Elcano had already commanded larger ships than those of the Magellan expedition. But prior to Magellan’s death, Elcano had not been a commander on this expedition. Early in the voyage, Magellan and Elcano had become bitter enemies, and Magellan had condemned Elcano to death for his part in a mutiny on the coast of South America. The only injury caused by the mutineers had been the stabbing of a fellow Basque loyal to Magellan, Juan de Elorriaga. Elcano had spent five months, a long gray winter, in chained hard labor in Patagonia while the crew waited for spring to find the straits to the Pacific.

Now in command, Elcano and the two ships engaged in the spice trade for some months, and then the
Victoria
continued around the world while the
Trinidad
was left behind for repairs. The latter was eventually stripped by the Portuguese and destroyed in a squall.

On September 8, 1522, almost nine months after leaving the
Trinidad
, three years and one month after setting sail from Seville, Elcano, the first man to circumnavigate the globe, sailed the
Victoria
up the Guadalquivir River and tied her up at a pier in Seville. On her decks was the surviving crew of eighteen men, including at least four Basques. In rags, carrying candles, the barefoot crewmen walked a mile to the cathedral, where they offered thanks at the shrine of Santa María de L’Antigua.

Elcano was given an annual pension and honored with a coat of arms featuring a globe with the words
Primus circumdedisti me
, Thou who first circumnavigated me. But many of the surviving eighteen received nothing. One, Juan de Acurio, stated two years later that all he had earned from the voyage was “glory, experience, and a bale of cloves.”

The
Victoria
went on to the merchant service, making one voyage to the Caribbean and going down with all hands on the second. To the enormous profit of the Basques, this was an age when an unprecedented number of ships were being lost at sea, and the demand for shipbuilding seemed limitless.

Basques returned to the Philippines. Andrés de Urdaneta, became the second man to circumnavigate the globe, completing a nine-year expedition in 1536. Then Miguel Lopez de Legazpi y Gorrocategui, who had gone to Mexico in 1528, where he amassed the fortune every adventurous Spaniard of the day was dreaming of, sailed to the Philippines, took Luzon, and established Manila as the capital of the new colony in 1571. Centuries later, when Spain lost its colonies and conflicting nationalisms divided the Spanish and the Basques, the angry Spanish military would no longer remember that it was the Basques who had secured much of Spain’s global empire in the first place.

4: The Basque Saint

Those who know the Jesuits know that Basque nationalism is completely Catholic.

—Sabino Arana
, E
L
C
ORREO
V
ASCO
,
July 29, 1899

B
ASQUES MAY REMEMBER
their own role in building the Spanish Empire, but almost no one wants to remember the Basque role in building Spain itself. By the beginning of the sixteenth century the Reconquista had been accomplished. The Moors—and while the victors were at it, the Jews and the Gypsies—had all been driven out of Spain.
Los reyes Católicos
, the Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand of Aragón and Isabella of Castile, had forcibly fused a huge country, taking control of every kingdom and fiefdom on the Iberian peninsula except Portugal and the Basque Kingdom of Navarra.

Basques, in search of wealth and nobility, had fought for los reyes Católicos against other Basques to take Guipúzcoa, Vizcaya, and Alava. In exchange, Ferdinand had promised the Basques that up to the Ebro, their ancient laws, the Fueros, were to be respected. Throughout their history, the Basques have been willing to compromise their independence as long as they could have self-rule by their traditional laws. Like the language, the laws are an essential part of Basque identity. For unknown numbers of centuries, these laws were based on custom and, unlike Roman law, had no formal code. In the twelfth century these traditions were, for the first time, written into a legal code. The Spanish language was used because Spanish was thought of as the language of legal codes, and they became known as the
Fueros
, a Spanish word meaning “codified local customs.” Many other parts of Iberia, including Castile, had fueros, but nowhere were they as extensive or as revered as in Navarra and the Basque provinces.

The first article of the Fueros of Navarra states that the Fueros are “customs and practices, written and non-written,” that guarantee “justice to the poor as to the rich.” They comprised both commercial and criminal law, addressing a wide range of subjects, including the purity of cider, the exploitation of minerals, the laws of inheritance, the administration of farmland, crimes and punishments, and a notably more progressive view of human rights than was recognized in Castilian law.

A Basque assembly, the Juntas Generales, met under an oak tree at Guernica, to legislate and rule on Foral law. The meetings predate the written code. Meeting-oaks had been established in several Vizcayan towns but the Guernica sessions, which lasted two or three weeks, became dominant. Local assemblies sent elected representatives to Guernica and trumpets were sounded and bonfires lit on the nearby mountaintops. By tradition, a representative from Bermeo was the first to be heard. At the end of the session, a fourteen-man ruling body was chosen by lot to govern until the next meeting. Once Vizcaya was tied to Castile, a representative of the King of Castile came to each meeting to swear that the authority of the Fueros would be respected.

Ferdinand understood the importance Basques attached to their laws and customs because the other region that came closest to Basques in its reverence for its own Fueros was his native Aragón. Not all Aragónese shared his enthusiasm for merging with Castile to build a superpower, and he had calmed them by promises of limited self-rule. In time, Ferdinand reasoned correctly, the Aragónese movement, once pacified, would fade, and he probably made the mistake of thinking the same would happen with the Basques.

Among the privileges that came to the Basques with recognition of the Fueros were exemption from direct taxation by Castile, exemption from import duties, and exemption from military service outside their own province. When Castile wanted Basque taxes, it had to negotiate the amount with the Basque government, which would then raise the agreed-upon sum from its own population. If the Castilians wished to have a Basque army or navy to use beyond the defense of Basqueland, the monarchs had to negotiate with Basques to raise an army or navy, usually in exchange for fees and privileges.

The Basques have little tradition of aristocracy—none outside of Navarra. In the
Fuero General
, the first written Basque code set down in 1155, there is only one reference to lords and vassals: “The Navarrese are to serve their King as good vassals.” No other Basque titles exist. It was the Spanish who conferred titles of nobility and the right to a coat of arms to wealthy citizens. The Loyolas of Azpeitia, in central Guipúzcoa, were a notable example of a Basque family that had served the Castilians in exchange for wealth and titles. In 1331, Alfonso XII, king of Castile, presented the family with a coat of arms.

The Basques have a reputation of being warlike in the service of Basques. But the Loyola family exemplified another Basque tradition, known to both the Carthaginians and Romans, of being warriors for profit. Loyolas had been honored for battles they had fought against not only the Moors and the French but also fellow Basques. The family had played a critical role in making Guipúzcoa part of Castile. In September 1321, an army from Guipúzcoa joined forces with the Castilians to defeat the French and the Navarrese in the Battle of Beotibar. The exploits of seven Loyola brothers during this fight are still recounted in Euskera once a year in the little Guipúzcoan village of Iguerondo.

Beltran, a son of one of the brothers, fought the Moors for the king of Castile and was rewarded with land. In the Reconquista, as land was gained, a warlord would build a castle and encourage settlement under his protection. This was a Castilian concept, not a Basque one. Beltran not only built such a castle on his Castilian-granted land but also used his castle in Azpeitia as a base from which to raid and pillage weaker warlords and even the Church. Eventually he was excommunicated by the bishop of Pamplona.

In 1491, Iñigo López de Oñaz y Loyola was born. A direct descendant of Beltran, he was destined to be the most famous Basque in history. Each generation of Loyolas had continued the family tradition. Iñigo’s grandfather had attacked the two neighboring towns and lost. As punishment, the family castle was torn down and he was sentenced to fight the Moors in Andalusia. Allowed to return after four years, he rebuilt the family home out of brick in a Moorish style, and that house still stands. His son, Iñigo’s father, Bertrand de Loyola, pledged himself to Ferdinand and Isabella, fighting the French for Castile in 1476 in Toro and Fuenterrabía.

A sixteenth-century Basque contemporary of Iñigo wrote, “The Loyolas were one of the most disastrous families our country had to endure, one of those Basque families with a coat of arms over the door, in order to justify the misdeeds that were the tissue and pattern of their lives.”

By the time of Iñigo’s birth, the family, though culturally still Basque, had amassed great wealth from royal favors. In the family tradition, his brothers were soldiers and adventurers. It was a new age of adventure, and the oldest shipped out on Columbus’s second voyage and later died in a naval engagement against the French. Another died in battle in Naples. Another served Castile in the Lowlands. Another sailed to America in 1510 and died in a fight with angry tribesmen.

They were the knights of their age who, with no more Moors to defeat, looked to new lands in which to do combat. Only one brother, Pedro López, was different, turning to religion and becoming the rector of the local church.

Iñigo, too, was initially trained for the priesthood. His mother had died when he was very young, and, raised in a nearby cottage by a blacksmith’s wife, he grew up praying in the local dialect of Euskera. But, realizing that, like his older brothers, he was more suited for action and worldly pleasures than a spiritual life, the family found him a position in the Castilian court as a page to Juan Velázquez de Cuéllar, treasurer general of Castile.