Chapter 8: Ruptures, Continuities and New Creations in The Establishment Processes of Immigrant Families to The Basque Country: Implications for Education

The work that we are presenting cannot include in its entirety the complex issue of the Basque language and education in the Basque Country. Languages are living systems that respond to the communicative needs that arise in different areas of life. Thus, language has to be communicative, effective, fun, open to change, present in both formal and informal levels, and in constant transformation in order to adapt to the processes of modernization. The issue of languages in the Basque Country has a history that goes together with language policy that reflects the power of the Spanish State in the unification of languages. Evidence of this is the loss of the less powerful language, Basque, against the languages with greater power, Spanish and French. Given this reality, it is worth remembering that in Europe there are more languages than countries and that there is no identification between states and languages. Basque is one of the 68 languages spoken in Europe. It is also the oldest: Basque predates all of the Indo-European languages existing in Europe, and it survived the domination of Latin in Europe and the expansion of the languages derived from Latin.