TV for breakfast, TV for lunch, snack and sometimes even a little TV for dinner. This is the daily leisure menu for today’s children. But I’m not going to talk about it, or about the appropriateness of the content of the series that children see, which are often questionable.

Television is an effective source of reference and model for children. Children like the characters on the screen, are passionate about their little adventures and often play conversational games on them. Yogi Bear, Popeye Sailor, Dinosaurs... What kids don’t know?

I know it, probably all the kids, but some of these cartoons do it in Basque, and some of the other cartoons are empty shelves. This is what will happen to today’s Navarrese children, who have not had access to cartoons in Basque since last September. And that, how?

Since the change of children’s programming from ETB1 to ETB3, Navarrese children can’t watch the Basque television series that the children of the Basque Country watch every day. In Navarre we can’t take the ETB channels through Digital Terrestrial Television and we continue in the previous analogue format –which we don’t know when– we receive ETB1 and ETB2. In addition, the agreement signed in 2009 between the Government of Navarre and the Basque Government provides for the reception of the first two ETB channels in the Foral Community, but does not mention ETB3.

If there is an agreement, however, the unwillingness to comply with it is evident. Neither the signatory nor the other signatory wishes to assume the cost of legumes for the adoption of ETB in Navarre. While Sanz claims that it is “an issue that does not benefit the Navarrese people”, he gives a million euros each year to Canal 4, Canal 6 and Popular TV, even if they do not meet the quota of Basque broadcasting.

The Basque people of Navarre are now more inclined to some things than they were twenty years ago. While the children’s series (Clan, Canal Disney, ETB3...) have been renewed for twenty years, in Navarre we have lost the only opportunity we had. This is the first generation that, unlike their parents, will believe that cartoons (such as SpongeBob, Iggle Piggle, Patito Feo, etc.) do not speak Basque. Some are seriously interested in the growth of Navarrese children without tele-referents in Basque.