Aberri Eguna

It was first organised by the Basque Nationalist Party on 27 March 1932 in Bilbao, then consisting of a demonstration of some 65,000 participants which terminated at the Sabino Arana House.

[1] Aberri is a neologism coined by Sabino Arana based on the suffix -ba which occurs in numerous kinship terms (e.g. osaba "uncle", izeba "aunt", arreba "sister of a man" etc.)

[2] The first Aberri Eguna was held to celebrate the anniversary of the concept of political Basque nationalism as put forward by Sabino Arana in 1882, according to his own writings.

[3] However, its coinciding with Easter is deliberate as it follows the motto of the Basque Nationalist Party Jaungoiko eta Lege Zaharrak "God and the Old Laws" and the symbolism of the resurrection of Christ.

From 1936 onwards, the year of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, it was no longer celebrated in a single location but instead in various localities on a smaller scale and under clandestine conditions as, under Franco, Aberri Eguna was forbidden from 1937 to 1975.