Sabino Arana - The Mixed Influence of Sabino Arana in The Basque Society

The Mixed Influence of Sabino Arana in The Basque Society

Sabino Arana's ideas are considered to have spawned the nationalist movement. Today, he is viewed as a controversial figure, due to his xenophobia and ethnocentrism and his ideas of a pure race.

The Partido Nacionalista Vasco, holders of the intellectual property of his works, has chosen not to reprint them since 1976, keeping only the more "moderate" part of his message in their charter. On the other hand, some Basques still revere him as the father of the nationalist movement, who managed to start the turnaround of the decay of the Basque language and culture. Many Basque cities have streets named after him.

The estate of his Abando home is now Sabin-Etxea ("Sabino-House"), the EAJ-PNV headquarters.

Jon Juaristi has remarked that perhaps the most influential part of his heritage is the neologistic list of Basque versions of names in his Deun-Ixendegi Euzkotarra ("Basque saint-name collection", published in 1910). Instead of the traditional adaptations of Romance names, he proposed others he made up and that in his opinion were truer to the originals and adapted to the Basque phonology. For example, his brother Luis became Koldobika, from Frankish Hlodwig. The traditional Peru, Pello or Piarres ("Peter") became Kepa from Aramaic כיפא (Kepha). He believed that the suffix -e was inherently feminine, and new names like Nekane ("pain"+ne,"Dolores") or Garbine ("clean"+ne, "Immaculate ") are frequent among Basque females. Even the name of the son-in-law of the king of Spain is Iñaki Urdangarin, Iñaki being an Arana alternative for Ignatius instead of the Basque traditional Inazio.