“The son of the accordionist”, because we are our culture and our language

A great text on memory, friendship and love for one's land. Thus, in a few words we can summarize "The son of the accordionist" (21letters, 2023, pp. 544, also e-book) by Bernardo Atxaga , one of the most authoritative voices of Basque and Spanish literature of our time.

The volume, in fact, traces the events of Spain and the Basque country during the twentieth century through the stories of two great friends, Joseba and David , their passions, their choices, their inextinguishable bond with their homeland.

At the beginning of the story we find them at the end of their long friendship. David - who as a boy was identified as the accordionist's son given his father's job - left a notebook after his death, a sort of intimate diary and personal account of the political events of his country. The writing pushes Josepa to rethink the past: the bygone days of childhood, then adolescence and adulthood, in the Basque country of Obaba.

Memories bring back the hard years of Franco's dictatorship , then the fascination for Basque separatism, the return of democracy and the horror of ETA terrorism . Writing becomes a way of recalling history, finding a truth, albeit individual and partial, because only a written text has this power as Atxaga states recalling one of the episodes that come back alive in Josepa's memory: «When we were in prison, the common prisoner head of the infirmary asked him one day why he wrote stories. 'The truth has to be written somehow,' Joseba had replied. The prisoner was not very convinced. 'I think the direct way is best,' he replied. Joseba laughed and patted him on the shoulder. 'I really tell you, colleague. It is easier for a prisoner to slip through the keyhole and run away than for a mortal to be able to tell the truth the way you do.'

However , what Josepa finds himself recalling is above all the intertwining of great history and personal events , such as the difficult moment in which he and the accordionist 's son had found themselves side by side with young people who chose clandestinity in the name of the people 's freedom Basque. The moment when ideals gave way to weapons, violence, the blood of enemies on the streets in response to more violence and the prevarications of the Franco regime. Faced with the terrorist drift, the two friends – it is Bernardo Artxaga through their mouths – chose a different path. They developed the conviction that freeing themselves and bringing out the Basque soul and identity was a process that had to start from the deepest cultural roots and from the language. The Basques existed, they were an established fact and they existed because of their origins, their culture, their language. The rest was just violence and even the political struggle lost its meaning when it abandoned any kind of ethics and mercy in the name of ideals. The choice could only be to refuse weapons and blood in the name of higher and more positive feelings. And the choice had to be made immediately because, as Atxaga writes in the book speaking of one of David and Josepa's fellow fighters: «He would not have hesitated, because he knew, without reading it anywhere, that time does not pass in vain; that the hugs we didn't give each other in this world we will never give again in the grave".