Idaho celebrates Basque culture with return of Jaialdi festival
Carson McCullough
BOISE, Idaho (CN) — “Kamarada! Kamarada!”
The voice rang clear even as the din of Jaialdi and its hundreds, perhaps thousands, of attendees surrounded it. The older gentleman who called out waved his drink in the air, a smile splitting his face, as a responding call echoed from somewhere in the throngs of people. The man rushed forward to embrace his kamarada, his comrade, as the crowd swallowed them both.
This was perhaps the trademark image of Jaialdi, the largest Basque festival in the world — one that was repeated often for all to see.
A grandmotherly figure chiding a young man for letting his Euskara, language of the Basque people, get so rusty. A group of young children running in their espadrilles, a traditional Basque shoe made of canvas. Friends and family that had not seen each other for who knows how long, gathered again to eat, drink and dance for their heritage.
The excitement of the festival was further punctuated by the fact that it had not taken place in a decade.
Jaialdi typically happens once every five years in Boise’s Basque Block, a neighborhood of downtown Boise that’s made up of the largest concentration of Basque people in the country. It’s a tradition that harks back to 1987 when the first Jaialdi was celebrated at the Old Idaho Penitentiary.
But the gathering planned for 2020, the five-year follow up to Jaialdi 2015, fell victim to Covid-19 and attempts to hold it in 2021 and 2022 never materialized. Not until this week, when a hot July evening marked the beginning of Jaialdi 2025.
For some, the return of the festival was a chance to enjoy traditional Basque paella — a dish often mistakenly attributed to Mexico or Spain, but in fact originated from the Basque — served by the Basque Market out of shallow pan wide enough to sleep on. The smell of shellfish and chorizo carried for blocks on the stiff summer breeze, and the line to partake stretched nearly the length of the festival.
For others, it was a chance to drink celebratory amounts of kalimotxo, a wine and cola drink that’s a cultural mainstay at festivals like Jaialdi. Children — and a great many adults — contented themselves with shaved ice that fit right at home with the 100-degree heat.
And for many, like attendee Anders who has been a regular at Jaialdi for as long as it’s been around, it meant home.
“Jaialdi, in Euskara, means festival,” he explained loudly in my ear while the crowd surged around us close to where beer was being served. “But it means more than that. It means home and family and feeling safe. That’s how I feel. At home.”
Home was, from the perspective of a Jaialdi newcomer, an apt description. Even amidst a crowd that large, there were no feelings of busy anxiety that possess so many festivals and fairs. People moved at a lazy pace, sipped their drinks without rush and paused often to admire everything the Basque Block had to offer.
Years of Basque history was kept in this neighborhood that took up just a single city block. In the middle of the festival and roped off for safety, stood the Cyrus Jacobs/Uberuaga House, a historical Basque boarding house built in the early 1900s.
It was one of many built at the turn of the century, when thousands of Basque people immigrated to the United States from their homeland of the Pyrenees, neighboring Spain and France.
Many of those journeys ended in Boise, where they took to Idaho’s farmland to become sheepherders and cattle ranchers.
Today, a century later, descendants of those early immigrants watched as their history came alive all around them once more — celebrated by Basque and non-Basque alike.
This was on full display when a trio of young girls, strolling down the block in locked arms, stopped to admire something on the stone under their feet. They laughed and pointed at it, broke into a hurried line of song in Euskara, only to scurry away as if embarrassed.
I walked over to where they had sung and discovered a block of stone had been carved with the lyrics of a traditional Basque nursery rhyme, "Pintto Pintto," that tells of a playful black-and-white family dog. A closer look around the block revealed dozens of carvings etched with songs ranging from love letters to family, to an ode to the Tree of Gernika, a Basque symbol of freedom.
I was not alone in feeling welcome, despite never having attended Jaialdi. Jordan Scott had never been to Jaialdi before this week and had only discovered it through the local news while in town visiting family for the summer. Now he plans on making the pilgrimage back every five years whenever he can.
“I heard there was going to be good food and lots to drink,” he said, laughing as he held up a beer in one hand and a bowl of paella in the other. “And I got what I came for!”
For those who wish to celebrate with Scott and the Basque, Jaialdi lasts for just a few days before concluding on Sunday with a traditional Jaialdi mass.
For those who don’t make it, they must endure the next five years until 2030 when Jaialdi is expected to return.
As I left the festival pondering this five-year tradition and the history bound to it, a final stone carving, this time inscribed on a bench, seemed to hear my thoughts and responded.
“Izan zirelako gara garekako izango dira,” it read. Because they were, we are; because we are, they will be.