Navarre, an autonomous community in northern Spain bordering the Basque Country, La Rioja, Aragón and southern France, is one of the country’s lesser visited regions.

The best known city is the capital Pamplona, famous for its San Fermín festival and bull runs. It has a population of around 200,000 people, according to the latest figures from Spain National Statistics Institute (INE).

Like the Basque Country (and perhaps also Catalonia soon) owing to its unique identity and history Navarre has more fiscal powers than other regions. Navarre is in fact the only region of Spain that’s officially referred to as a comunidad foral rather than a comunidad autónoma to highlight its special status.

These extra rights give the regional authority greater responsibility for collecting and administering taxes, but, like with the neighbouring Basque Country, this arrangement also gives Navarre a greater sense of cultural and political autonomy than other regions of Spain too, as well as some independence from the centralised Spanish state.

Historically speaking, Navarre and the Basque Country are intrinsically linked, as at different times they have been ruled by one another. Navarra is considered the fourth historical province of the Basque Country, and in the 12th century Euskal Herria (as the Basque Country is called in Basque) was part of the Kingdom of Navarre.

Many Navarros still speak Basque. However, in general terms there’s something of a cultural divide in the region, with the north considered by many to be ‘more Basque’ than the south.

As to whether people from Navarre are ‘more’ Basque or ‘more’ Spanish, obviously identity is a personal thing. Some people in Navarre will feel strictly Spanish, others more Basque, and many somewhere in between the two.

Are people from Navarre more Basque than Spanish?

One of the main factors people think about when they think of the Basque Country is, of course, the language. 

One of the few surviving pre-Indo-European languages, Basque is among the oldest in Europe and has been continuously spoken in the Basque Country – in northern Spain and southwest France – for thousands of years.

Little is known of its origins, only that it predates the Romance languages of its neighbours and has no known links to any other modern languages. 

READ ALSO: 14 unique Basque words that are very handy to know

For Basques, their mysterious language is one of the proudest expressions of their non-Spanish identity. If people in Navarre feel similarly, then they’d likely speak some Basque as well as castellano. 

According to figures from the Navarre Statistics Institute (Nastat), in 2021 a little over a quarter (26.5 percent) of the population in Navarre have some knowledge of Basque. That’s a decent proportion of people, but hardly a majority.

If we are going by language, the more Basque areas can usually be found in northern Navarre in towns closer to the French border like Elizondo than in cities in the south of the region like Pamplona.

That’s not to say Basque isn’t growing as a language, however. In survey data from 1991 on the use of Basque in Navarre, only 14.1 percent of Navarros said they knew Basque — 9.5 percent were fully Basque-speaking and 4.6 percent knew ‘some’ Basque.

However, more than 30 years later, data from the regional government shows  that these figures have risen to around a quarter (24.7 percent) of people living in Navarre. According to latest data recorded in 2021, 14.1 percent of Navarrese are Basque speakers, while 10.6 percent know ‘some’ Basque.

If we’re thinking about the future, the interesting take away from the polls is that the increase is mostly due to the use of Basque by people under the age of 25, since 28 percent can speak it and 12.2 percent know some of the language.

Identity

Similarly to how some Catalans and Basques happily supported the Euro 2024 winning Spanish national team this summer, in Navarre there are people who feel wholly Spanish and some who feel more Basque.

Public opinion surveys commissioned by the UPNA (Universidad Pública de Navarra) found that that four out of every five people surveyed feel, in one way or another, ‘Navarro’.

Interestingly, with that 80.6 percent of people who identify as ‘Navarro’, almost half said they feel exclusively Navarro (45.1 percent of the 80.6) and 20.1 percent said they felt Navarro-Basque.

Some respondents (8.6 percent) reported a sense of triple identity, ie Navarro-Basque-Spanish (8.6 percent) and just 6.8 percent identified as Navarro-Spanish.

In that sense, we can conclude that most people in Navarre feel Navarro, a significant minority feel Navarro-Basque and less than a fifth feel Spanish over Basque.

However, according to the barometer commissioned by the regional parliament, 34.1 percent of people in Navarre feel Basque in some way. 

Culture vs geography 

Often when discussing regional identities the difference between culture and geography can become obscured. Pamplona writer Patxi Latorre told Noticias de Navarra that being ‘Basque’ can’t be boiled down to simply geographical question.

“What’s happening is that it is based on a confusion that starts with the idea that to be Basque is to be a citizen of the Basque region. Although Navarre and the Basque region are different communities, the citizens of both share a cultural and social nature and a name, that of Basques,” he said.

“That’s the problem: confusing being a citizen of a specific political community with being culturally and socially Basque.”

As the data clearly shows, a significant proportion of Navarros feel culturally Basque and speak the language, but aren’t politically Basque due to geography.

Politics

Regional politics can also tell us a bit about regional identity.

For many years, the UPN (Unión del Pueblo Navarro or Navarrese People’s Union in English) enjoyed a long-held political hegemony over the region, winning elections and ruling pretty much uninterruptedly for two decades from 1991-2011.

The UPN was until 2008 essentially part of the centre-right Partido Popular, one of Spain’s two big political parties that has been against separatist and regional movements across the country whether it be Catalonia or the Basque Country.

However, from 2019 onwards the UPN lost its stronghold over the region, with more left-leaning and even smaller, more Basque-nationalist sympathetic parties gaining an electoral foothold.

This development, together with the linguistic, cultural, historical and geographical links, show that the Navarre-Basque Country brotherhood is alive and well.

In fact, a clause in the 1978 Spanish Constitution gives Navarre the option of joining the Basque Country if its citizens vote in favour of it in a referendum.

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