The Region of Basque Country Home Page Cities & Regions Site Map

Versión Español

The Basque Country, called el País Vasco in Spanish or Euskadi in Basque, consists of four separate provinces located near the French border.

Historically it was divided into seven provinces, three of them laying in the north side of the Pyrenees and the other four on the south. Nowadays political layout is rather different. While the three northern provinces (Lapurdi, Beherea and Zuberoa) belong to France, the southern ones, belonging to Spanish territory (Álava, Guipúzcoa, Navarra, and Vizcaya) are further divided to form two autonomous communities; that of the Basque Country, grouping the Álava, Guipúzcoa, and Vizcaya provinces, and that of Navarra, formed solely by the province of Navarra.

The Basque Country was the first autonomous community to be formed in Spain, in 1979, yet it is one of the smaller autonomous communities of Spain. Isolated by the mountainous terrain, the Basques have maintained their linguistic and cultural uniqueness over the ages. Its most valuable jewel is its language, Euskera, a pre-Indoeuropean tongue whose mysterious origin has never been established.

Find out more about the Basque Country by looking at City.Net in Spanish or English. Also see various other Basque links and Buber's Basque Page.