Name. The Basque Country is the name given to the territorial area delimited by the recent use of the Basque language, i.e. from the eastern border Navarre and Aragon to the western border Biscay and Santander. The boundaries of this small country have been relatively fixed and crystallised for almost two millennia. We say this because already in Roman times the Basque people extended almost the entire length of the eastern Pyrenees. Basque Country, Pays Basque, Vasconia, Pais Vasco-Navarro and even others in disuse, such as Euskaria, etc., are names given from outside. But this variety of names contrasts sharply with the traditional use, already attested in writing from our earliest literary printings (16th century) of a single one, with a strong flavour and great spiritual resonance in the Basque mentality: Euskalerria. Euskalerria is the Basque land as seen by the Basques, intimately, without tourist or political interference. It is the popular name, alive in oral poetic improvisations, in songs, in everyday speech and in the written Basque texts of our writers.
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