From Herria to Hirria : Locating Dialogue in Julio Medem's La pelota vasca

Abstract

Nathan Richardson is Asso ciate Professor of Spanish at Bowling Green State University. His book Post modern Paletos explores the representation and production of rural/urban relationships in contempo rary Spanish culture. He has published numerous articles on peninsular nar rative and film. His book, Different Spains: Imagin ing Place and Space in Spanish Fiction and Film, is forthcoming. Spanish Basque director Julio Mederns first feature-length work, 1992 s Vacas, explicitly addressed questions of Basque identity. Vacas traced the interactions of two Basque families from the trenches of the third Carlist uprising to the forest skirmishes of the Spanish Civil War. In 2003, Mederns sixth film and first documentary, La pelota vasca, brought the director back to Basque issues and Basque lands, where he interviewed hundreds of politicians, academics, and victims on the subject of the current Basque conflict. Mederns explicit return to Basque issues in La pelota vasca invites audiences to return to the films that La pelota and Vacas bookend?encouraging them to see La ardilla roja, Tierra, and Los amantes del ctrculo polar as part of an ongoing five-film dialogue on Basque identity.1 The regular references to Basque places, events, and people; the repetition of actors in similar roles both within and among the films; and other common motifs to the five suggest that Mederns interest in the Basque question is constant. Vacas and La pelota vasca are only the most explicit works in a Basque-focused whole; the palindrome vacaslvasca works itself out, so to speak, over the course of the five features.