SHIT THE BASQUES HAVE TO DEAL WITH (Part II)
This happened just yesterday (mila esker 7ilargitxoro7-ri!!). This man talking is Gaizka Garitano, Eibar football team’s coach during the press conference after the match against Almería in this same town (Andalusia).
A Basque journalist asks Mr Garitano about his impressions on the match in Euskara, and the coach starts answering in this language. But then another (non-Basque) journalist begins to mutter complaining about he can’t understand a word while the coach is speaking. The Almeria team’s press responsible asks for silence and respect, explaining that after the ones in Basque Mr Garitano would answer every other question in Spanish, as usual. The Basque coach restarts his answer and the journalist restarts his complaints: - Eibar coach: Is anything wrong? - Journalist: Yes, that as you can see, we don’t get a thing. - Press responsible: Come on, gentlemen. We’ve been in First Division for 6 years and when Barça came, we always did a question in Catalan and another one in Spanish. I don’t know why you’re doing all these gestures
Neither do we. But this is unacceptable. Well done, Gaizka Garitano, and kudos to that press responsible for calling a spade a spade: this is A LACK OF RESPECT.
UPDATE: ABC, a national newspaper, covers the story - quite incorrectly, because he didn’t answer two questions in Basque, he tried to answer just one and couldn’t - and finishes the article with this lovely sentence that has everything to do with sports: “Several times, Garitano has publicly advocated for the independence of the Basque Country”. Because an article about anything Basque is never complete without a politic nuance. Independence = Euskera = Bad. EUSKERA IS A CO-OFFICIAL LANGUAGE. STOP STIGMATIZING IT.
