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Gorri and banderari. Luzaide (Nafarroa), 2013. Photo credit: Emilio Xabier Dueñas.
In traditional European collectives, the socializing process of transition to adulthood and the role attributed to the age category of young adults have been of essential importance, manifesting itself in their gradual social implication, younger birth cohorts being the natural generational replacement of older workforces and actively committed to social responsibility, while implementing a balanced dichotomy between social control and the possibility of taking certain liberties or permissibility inherent to this stage in life. Their duties included the following: defence of local geographic limits and organized use of arms, supervision and censorship of deviations from customary practice, invitations to fellow young folks as token of inter-local good-neighbourliness and interventions as effective agents in cases of overt rivalry, courtesy visits and accompaniments to authorities and notables, and provision of obligatory services to the neighbourhood. Indeed, it could not be otherwise, they epitomized the regenerative potential, so necessary for the generational continuity of communities.
Markaida community group, 1950s. Mungia Council Photographic Archive.
Summer is prime time for the celebration of patron saint festivities, along with local festivals in neighbourhoods and at hermitages. In the old days, and until just a few decades ago, such events would be customarily organized by informal groups of youth.
As a matter of fact, we would like to take this opportunity to recall a tradition, once common in many localities of Bizkaia but which disappeared during the civil war: namely, that of the so-called zaragi-mutilak ‘lads of the wineskin’. Indeed, a group of youth, known as eskota in the region of Uribealdea, would share the cost of a full wineskin for drinking and feasting. Most notably observed in the municipality of Mungia, particularly in the neighbourhoods of Atxuri, Belako, Billela, Elgezabal, Iturribaltzaga, Laukariz, Markaida and Trobika, the custom persisted until the mid-20th century. Practically lost today, barely survives, being partly maintained, only in the neighbourhoods of Atxuri and Trobika. (more…)
Bilbo-Abando
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Derio
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Bilbo-Bolueta
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labayru@labayru.eus
