page_title: Julio de Urquijo e Ibarra
section_title: Vascólogo: controversies
hierarchical_section_title: Julio de Urquijo e Ibarra / Vascólogo: controversies
caption_attribution_description: English: plaque above the entrance to Larrea, the Baleztena house in Leitza
context_page_description: Julio de Urquijo e Ibarra, Count of Urquijo, in Basque self-styled as Julio Urkixokoa, was a Basque linguist, cultural activist, and a Spanish Carlist politician. As a Traditionalist deputy he twice served in the Cortes, during the terms of 1903-1905 and 1931-1933, though the climax of his political activity fell on the late Restoration period. As a scientist he was the moving spirit behind settting up numerous vascologist institutions, especially Revista Internacional de Estudios Vascos and Sociedad de Estudios Vascos. Himself he specialized in Basque paremiology and bibliography. He opposed academy-driven unification of Basque dialects and preferred to wait until standard Basque emerges naturally.
context_section_description: As a vascólogo Urquijo was involved in a number of fundamental debates related to the Basque realm. He followed Azkue when confronting the "aranistas". He charged them with pursuing an amateurish and highly speculative approach, resulting in advancing theories which suited their allegedly idealized, Arcadian and almost mythical vision of Basque community; this stance had to be repelled by purely scientific approach. Urquijo's decisiveness in dismantling what he considered myths has even earned him the opinion of an iconoclast. Another line of conflict with the Aranists was their perceived obsession with linguistic purity, entangled in "extravagant etymologies" and "most grotesque hypotheses"; one of the SEV objectives was to wrest the language issue away from zealous nationalists, especially that Urquijo personally appreciated internal variability of Basque dialects. Finally, the area of conflict with Arana and his followers was the cross-linguistic issue. Anchored in a European, cosmopolitan and aristocratic milieu, Urquijo adhered to extremely xenophile approach and envisioned Basque in a wide international cultural context, while Arana was anxious to protect genuine Basque from the outside influence.
  A fundamental issue facing SEV was unification of written Basque. For two distinct reasons Urquijo was firmly against taking any action; his scientific focus convinced him there was not enough linguistic evidence to take any course, and his predilection for dialects rendered it impossible to accept their marginalization for the sake of creating a common speak. To him, unification efforts resembled extravagant theories advanced by early vascólogos and purist fixation of the Aranists. On the same basis, he opposed creation of Comisión de Neologismos, as lexical growth was the matter of the pueblo, not the academy. Though Urquijo appreciated the need of an orthodoxy, he did not consider it urgent and preferred to wait and see which dialect prevails. He understood his role as stimulating this process by reprinting traditional Basque works, getting to know the Basque linguistic realm by means of scientific research and promoting the usage of Basque. His stance prevailed, as both SEV and Euskaltzaindia did not adopt any decisive steps. Some scholars claim that unification, finally decided in 1968, developed along the lines envisioned by Urquijo.
  Later-day vascólogos commented that SEV was tilted towards "Vasconia tradicional que de la Vasconia real" and suggested that Urquijo was heavily responsible for the bias. It is also evident that following the course set by RIEV, SEV formatted its profile as focused on scientific research, somewhat leaning towards historical analysis, and refrained from assuming regulatory and normative role. This might have been heavily influenced by the vision of linguistics harbored by Urquijo. This could have been also the result of his wish to steer clear of potential conflict areas, such as nagging present-day issues, which might have wrecked SEV's impartiality and damaged its blank political profile. This did not spare Urquijo and SEV the charge of ideological bias. Though expressed first during late Francoism in somewhat Aesopian language, the point was that confessional nature of Basque cultural institutions of that era was incompatible with strictly neutral stand.
caption: Vasconia tradicional
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