MARCHING AGAINST GENDER PRACTICE, BOOK

This study began with the question why was it so problematic for the majority of Hondarribian townspeople to accept the broader participation of women in the annual, military march known as the Alarde. To explain this dispute, almost four-hundred years of local history were examined from the limited archives of Hondarribia and some secondary sources. Most importantly, however, this study considers how gender practices were and are organised in the Basque town of Hondarribia. The controversy to extend female involvement in the Alarde resulted in two positions between betikoak traditionalists, (Betiko Alardearen Aldekoak, ‘Always the Town’s Alarde’), and local ‘feminists’ (emakumealdekoak or Emakumeak Juana Mugarrietakoa, the Women of Mugarrietakoa, WJM), the former group wishing to preserve the ritual and the latter wanting to change it. These were not simply dichotomous stances but represented multiple levels of local identity through differing concepts of gender, history, and social experience. Commemorative ceremonies or re-enactment rituals were defined as meaningful actions that are historically based and mythologize the past. These are ritualised actions that are shaped by present circumstances, present social values and present social institutions and are transformed over time and are often confirmed, contested, and negotiated by the actors who control and perform in them. Reliving aspects of the past was a means of instilling in local peoples like Hondarribians a greater sense of their historical importance. The book demonstrated how history became distorted by glorifying and transforming local history as integral to a nationalist Basque history. While military marches demonstrated the strength of Basques willing to defend their townships and in turn Basque pride. Such transformations have to be taken into context with the loss of the Carlist cause in 1876 and the rise and spread of nationalism in the region at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century.