Could you do us some genealogical cartography to begin with?

The ancestors were originally from Burgos, the village of Angulo is also nearby. It was at the beginning of the 19th century that Nicolás de Angulo went to America to make a fortune. Later our father came back, he was the ambassador of Paraguay in Madrid. 36 When Gerla came out, his father, his mother, and his father, who was about fourteen years old, and many people who had nowhere to hide in the siege, were taken to the embassy. It was rough, at any moment the shots came through the windows and then quickly everyone was on the ground. At home we have the Paraguayan flag full of bullet holes and traces of blood.

They were expelled to France during the refinement of Gerla. As diplomats they traveled with the rest of the refugees to Barcelona, from there to Perpignan, and finally to Dax. Her grandmother’s sister had been handcuffed to the Paraguayan consul in France and their summer home in Dax. At that time it was not the midnight cough of the goat to cross the Atlantic, the Second World War was also exploded... But that’s not why they stayed here: the reason was that our grandfather and grandmother did not understand each other. Only his grandfather returned to Paraguay; his grandmother and father were there. Then my dad got married in Bayonne.

What kind of life did your parents have?

Without vanity, it was very difficult to find work after the war. They were in the hospitality industry. Every once in a while, some of the sums sent from my dad came in and we had a party. We never spoke Spanish in order to integrate as soon as possible. I’ve studied Spanish at the Liceo, that’s why I’m a bit clumsy.

Did they at least teach you the way to the mountain?

I have a passion for the mountain that my father gave me. He used to hang out with his friends on the mountain during the war. When they went to Iparla or Artzamendi they had to go through the Nazi checkpoints. They used to be Austrian soldiers, old and old, and they used to need a bottle of wine to let them go. By the time I rode, my brothers, who were both older, had a driver's license. They were driving on the mountain and I was driving on the mountain. They were not mountaineers. They didn’t like to go dancing with girls; they loved to go to the mountains with girls.

Then you were a student in Paris.

From 71 to 75. There was a lot of mobilization at the university against the Vietnam War. My wife, Terese, is also Vietnamese. At that time he was working in the village of Bayonne. Every week I wandered around Paris so we could be together. I studied on the train. He was charming; only for seven, without being disturbed. I got my studies thanks to those fourteen o's on the train.

It is said that an old book is to blame for starting a cartographer...

Jean Defos du Raurena, Pyrénées Basques, Guide des Excursions et Ascensions dans les Montagnes du Pays Basque Français. The intervention was special, it was the first time I saw a guide to the mountain. He had very simple cards, drawn by hand and also made routes by any means. The book is from 1953, I met him in 1968. During this period the North had an alimal development; roads, border opening... It was very interesting to capture the differences between the guide of 50 and the reality of 60.

When I was 21 years old, I published my first articles on the mountain in the magazine of the Basque Museum in Bayonne and I began to make myself known slowly, because my other brother did not work on these occasions.

And the book, how did it come?

My exchange with Mr. Marrimpouey of Pabe, to whom I presented my work. I was very young, he was very old again, and very kind. He had already lost his publishing house, and he said to me: “You will edit your book, I will print it and you will pay me when the profits come.” And so we did. I paid him more than he thought, though, because he sold very well. I was 24 years old and I started at 17. This was an immense work, deep and detailed.

“Cartography, that thing invented by the military,” said Iñaki Segurola in his book Hoy no tiempo de muerte. Please define that.

When I started, the only material was military. And a little short on top of that. Especially the South. The Spanish Ejercitos, for example, had barely a mountain next to Txindoki. In the place of Mount Larraun appeared the valley; the valley in the place of the mountain! The Alpine House of Catalonia revolutionized this panorama. They had a good idea: to express for the mountaineers the cards, which were more simple and with the route indicated. But at the beginning the cards were scientific objects. The military wrote the toponyms as much as they could, because they would not understand Basque easily. The common French toponymy is wrong. The deformed one. There's so much more going on with the gascon. All the names of the Pyrenees are grouped together as deformed by army officers.

These names have been approached with deformation but ‘officiality’.

Bon, that's the way it is. They wrote The Rhune and everybody says The Rhune. Only those who have studied at school have taught at Larru, and that has been the case for 15 years.

How did you do it with names?

In my letters Larrun appears and I place La Rhune in parentheses; I place Arsamendi Artzamendi. I have collaborated frantically with the names and together we have created a poxika-poxika toponymy in Basque. I have had to be “baptized” from time to time. If it is a brook called Selva, the forest is, of course, Selva; and if the hill has no name, I will call it Selva's neck.

This “must be baptized” is a great responsibility.

It is natural that the sites of a district have the same name. Doubt arises where it joins the district on the other side. What do you call a neck that connects two valleys? That’s why border crossings have two names. There are very few mountains with the same name everywhere. Pamplona by comparison: They are the “three black helmets” in Lower Navarre, while in Baztan it is Alkatxuri. And being philosophical... Where does the toponym come from? What is it, a guy who's been scratching the lawn for thousands of years? Where did Iparla come from? What does this name mean and how has it evolved? From generation to generation these names have come from mouth to mouth until they are written by the army, materializing them forever. The military puts on paper sounds that have been used for centuries. Then, slowly, people will begin to use this form. Misspelled, and perhaps misplaced, this name will be expanded. It is impossible to say exactly whether this place is called that way because there is no way of knowing. It's the chaos.

Once again the insurance: “Consider that the most uninformed and uncultured people in the mountainous and marine environment are the wisest, that is, those who know most of the place names around them.” Are you going to talk to a lot of people like that?

With the multiple.

Was it a problem not to know English?

I have the same problem with Basque with Catalan, Aragonese, biharness... That’s why I’ve always worked with local mountain groups. In the Basque Country I have always been accompanied by a friend from Armendaritz (Lower Navarre), Jean Bertrand Ibar. He is a man of great culture and is fluent in Basque. He also lives with passion the cartography itself. That’s why every time we meet someone, he or she chooses to get the necessary information. He's my finest collaborator. He has shown me the peculiarities of the South and the North, and that the toponyms must reflect these peculiarities.

Don't cartographers take away the mystery from the world?

On the contrary. The card appeals to the imagination. If you look at the rocks or the canyon on a plane, you have the passion to imagine the place and go to it. I prefer the pleasure of reading letters to travel literature.

What does it take to do a good cartographic job?

It's very difficult. For me cartography is aesthetics and technique, not science. I collect all the documents, photos and cards I found and then I start drawing. Because that's what I am: a cartoonist. I'm also a drawing teacher by profession, do the math.

Txomin Peillen investigated the significance of cardinal points in the Basque cosmovision. Would you dare to talk about what they mean today?

Here I don’t know, but in Polynesia everything is the other way around: the north is the south and the calendar is in the north... It’s confusing because the light that also denied me the task of interpreting the cards was upside down. In addition, I have problems of laterality; difficulties in distinguishing between right and left, east and west.

It's up to you! ? Problems separating left and right! ?

(Ha, ha, ha) ...yes, it is, I have to concentrate a lot. When I put the east in the text I want to say the west and also my translator Imanol Tapia, although he is an excellent translator, walks there somewhere. I put the sud-ouest and he'll turn the southeast. We have to check all the address quotes one by one before finishing the job.

What is the limit for you? Cartographers define boundaries.

I have never set limits on my work. Never borders between Aragon, the Basque Country, Catalonia and Biarno. A journalist wrote several years ago in Heraldo de Aragón: “What about that Miguel Angulo? He is advocating for the invaders by including Aragon in the maps of Catalonia...”. The man became inflamed because a part of Aragon appeared on the map of Catalonia. I don’t know if maybe [ironically] I should leave everything outside the borders of Catalonia to you. On the other hand, the people of Editorial Sua liked this non-granting of limits. In fact, it’s really ugly to cut cards according to the limits.

But isn't it just a question of aesthetics?

The mountains were before the people, and then they will remain. Few people live in high altitudes. And the border, so juxtaposed, is set on the highest peaks. It cannot be said that Vignemale is more Aragonese than Gascon; nor vice versa. I love the humanised mountain. I’m more interested in architectural ruins, shepherd’s huts, marshes... than the granitic highlands. You can learn the culture of each village in the landscape.

What kind of culture does our landscape exhibit?

He's changed. We have a problem with the slopes in the north. People who live in the mountains need these tracks, I understand that, but it does a lot of damage to nature and the landscape. They have traveled hundreds of miles around Garazi. It's absolutely ugly. The mountain has been wounded and there is no turning back.

You've been on the mountain for almost 40 years. Have the mountain roads changed?

In the 1970s, there were hardly any people on the mountain in the North. In the south, on the other hand, there were already strong groups organizing Sunday departures. They always went to specific places: To Ambota, to Gorbea... The mountaineers of the North have preferred to walk alone and in the South it is now also everything.

It is said that mountaineers and street children see the area differently. That what can be an admirable landscape for the street is absolutely trivial for the farmer. The wooded fields are beautiful for him, as they are more convenient.

Ugly stones are an example of this. Why this name for us to the most beautiful place in the Bidarrai area? He needs some kind of explanation. Ugly is an ugly place, too bad, because fallen sheep can be lost...

“I’m not going to write more about unknown places in the Basque Country,” you said in Luz fifteen years ago.

I came out of the Basque Country twenty years ago. In 1987 I didn’t dare to go to places like this. Today there is a pilgrimage every Sunday in the cave of the Lady of Anbou. The publisher wants another one like that book out, but I don't. There are plenty of people in the mountains, too.

How to protect nature?

We have the violence of forbidding access to certain places by law. There's no other way. We're going to have to confine areas that are absolutely brutal. I think there's something like this in the end. They're called integral reserves, there's one in Larra, Auñamendi.

All right, don't you want to do the ski resort there?

Yeah, next door or something. I think it’s good news, too.