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Autumn in oral literature

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Posted on 2025-09-12 in
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Festival of Saint Lucia in Zumarraga (13/12/2014). Author: E. X. Dueñas.

How often do we resort to expressions, sayings, refrains or proverbs known in our environment to seek the intentionality of their meaning?

These words have a certain weight of truth, but also a certain degree of error. That is Oral Literature. It is a collection of expressions, rules, oaths, that is, sayings, romances, songs, stories or tales that cannot be ignored and that are the fruit of popular wisdom.

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Autumn ends… winter begins.
Bonfires: from the mundane to the magical and vice versa

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Posted on 2023-12-29 in

“La ronda” [round dance] in Labastida (Araba) on 7 December. Photo: E. X. Dueñas.

A change that happened several years ago might have gone unnoticed among part of the population. That is the difference between the astronomical and meteorological season (from one view or observation of a period).

If we are referring to the northern hemisphere and, specifically, winter, while the start of the astronomical season is set by the Solstice between 19 and 22 December, depending on the year, the meteorological season is based on whole months: December, January and February.

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Traditional white wine making

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Posted on 2020-09-25 in

Iker Ugalde. Labayru Fundazioa Photographic Archive.

It is grape harvest time in the Basque Country. Txakolin wine producers sample their grapes to check acidity levels, sugar content, and three or four other parameters, in search of optimal fruit maturity.

Home winemaking was once customary in our country. Most farmhouses would keep some vines, on orchard and field margins, typically, or in rows between cultivated fields, to make the so-called txakolina — a slightly sparkling, dry white wine— for their own consumption. A quarter of a century ago there would be just over a dozen hectares of vineyards in Bizkaia; today there are more than four hundred. (more…)

Autumn-winter transhumance and transterminance

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Posted on 2019-12-06 in
Laderas de Eneabe. Ubide (Bizkaia), diciembre de 1996. José Ignacio García Muñoz. Archivo Fotográfico Labayru Fundazioa.

Slopes of Eneabe. Ubide (Bizkaia), December 1996. José Ignacio García Muñoz. Labayru Fundazioa Photographic Archive.

Spring-summer transhumance and transterminance, both implying movement of flocks to high pastures, were defined and dealt with in a previous post published on 17 May 2019.

With winter approaching, herds are brought down from the highlands, since adverse weather hamper the stay. And as the vegetative growth of grass stops or slows down due to cold winter temperatures, and there is not enough pasture in the lower valleys, herds are moved towards coastal areas, where milder temperatures prevail, or to warmer innermost regions of the country, such as the Royal Bardenas, frequented by most Pyrenean flocks, or even as far as Ebro Valley. (more…)

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