Claiming Breathing Space during Basque Plaza Dances

Maintaining minoritized expressions in the face of persecution has long been a subject of scholarship. In the Basque Country, dancers whose lives were deeply marked by the Franco dictatorship and its aftermath regularly attend plaza dances. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research in Donostia-San Sebastián, I argue that (through strict adherence to norms) these events become “breathing spaces” for participants: spaces in which language, music, and dance are vehicles for social life. Breathing spaces allow people to temporarily create the world in which they want to live, one in which the Basque language, music, and dance are predominant and secure.