argia.eus
INPRIMATU
The analysis
Microphones in theaters
Gorka Peñagarikano Goikoetxea 2025eko apirilaren 14a

"Ask for your turn and we'll join you," the willing and cheerful announcer who speaks from the studios tells the young correspondent who walks through the streets of Bilbao. The presenter immediately addressed the audience. "In the meantime, we are going to Pamplona..." They opened the line there. Third connection in just over five minutes.

What a noise coming through the corridors of the Navarre Arena. People have been in long lines, the correspondent says, and it was around noon when the Old Town and the Nabarrería areas were crowded, in a good state of mind, just a few minutes before the start of the parade with the Dena dance group... "Today the crowd is in Pamplona," the journalist sums up. "And not in vain. Rebirth is not a bird’s eye.” The eighth anniversary of the historic January 2025 slaughter, the number of the infinite astronomer, is the one that will be reborn today in the Navarre Arena. And there they are, there are the cameras and microphones of the Basque public radio TV, and there they are in Bilbao, reporting a period of bertso-musings of the Bira Kulturgune, in Hondarribia, also in Psilocybe, the festival of rock bands of the Bidasoaldea region, and in Michel Portal of Bayonne, the premiere of the new work of the collective Axut.

Not so long ago I listened to Agurtzane Intxaurraga and Mikel Aylloni on Radio Euskadi: let’s imagine a national public media, in the long evenings of the weekends, instead of making connections with two football stadiums, a handball court and a fronton, we put these mobilized correspondents in theaters, in the direct and quiet news there, talking to people, plugging press conferences and appearances into the line... and so on.

That’s where my mind went when I heard the president of Álava, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, Imanol Pradales, saying that the government will commit itself to “improving democratic quality” for what and to “advance as a people”.

When I heard this, the illusion of a corner of the brain told me that in order to advance as a people, culture must be placed at the center. Without permanently impeding the beautiful fronton and/or cycling tracks that also make the village... but my illusion does not want the competitive sport to make a village. Because the people need language and, as I recently heard from Ximun Fuchs, "if culture is sick, the language cannot live". The sick, more than ever, need care.