A brief history of Basque literatureFrom 1975 to the present day
Many things happen on certain dates. Let’s take 1975 as an example. It saw the death of the dictator Francisco Franco and also of the poet Gabriel Aresti. These were to exert a direct influence on cultural activity.
Publishing houses sprang up here, there and everywhere. There was plenty of good will but little in the way of money; it would take several years for these set-ups to become fully consolidated. The literary journals which were to be the training ground for many writers emerged in a similar way. The first ones was Ustela. A young man began signing his first works under the pen name of Bernardo Atxaga and another one called Koldo Izagirre put the wheels of that venture in motion, and in the first issue (in Panpina Ustela) their clear commitment to literature could already be detected. After that edition, two more, Mermelada Ustela and Zorion Ustela, were published, but they were edited by Izagirre himself and Ramon Saizarbitoria. That was the end of the Ustela venture, but not the end of the journal movement. Pott (which had Atxaga, Ruper Ordorika, Manu Ertzilla, Joseba Sarrionandia and Jon Juaristi as its travelling companions from 1980 onwards), Susa (produced in 1979 by students connected with the University of Donostia-San Sebastian) Oh! Euzkadi (in 1980 produced by Izagirre and Saizarbitoria), Maiatz (published from 1982 onwards in the Northern Basque Country). They were all transformed into platforms for writers.