Reimagining the Basque Country: From nation to community of care

Over the past sixty years, Basque nation-building and language advocacy movements— naziogintza and euskalgintza —have achieved major gains in self-government and language revitalisation. Yet over the past two decades, they have fallen into a deep impasse: their goal of overturning the long-standing dominance by Spanish and French national and linguistic regimes appears increasingly unattainable. Basque activists have already recognised the need to move beyond this zero-sum dynamic as a way of undoing the current deadlock. Going further, this article calls for relinquishing the idea of the Basque nation as the guiding principle of Basque nationalist and linguistic claims. In its place, and drawing on Roberto Esposito’s work, the article proposes the notion of a community of care , grounded in the reciprocal debt between self and other to inhabit coexistence together. This framework opens new possibilities for broader societal recognition and embrace of Basque national and linguistic aspirations.