José Miguel de Barandiaran

José Miguel de Barandiaran was born in Ataun in Gipuzkoa in 1889. In 1904, he started studying Latin and humanities at the Baliarrain (G) grammar school. From 1906 to 1912, he studied Philosophy and Theology at the Vitoria Council Seminary. He was interested in geology, physics and mathematics and taught himself French, German and English. Before taking Holy Orders, Barandiaran studied to be a teacher on his own and qualified as a teacher at the Vitoria Teaching Training College.

When studying theology, he suffered an intellectual crisis and began to read up on the origins of religion and the history of the different religions. In 1913, he went to Leipzig University to follow a course taught by Wilhem Wundt. The guidance he received there and his subsequent relationship with that professor would steer his ethnographic and anthropological research towards his cultural setting and was a shift from purely bookish science. In 1914, Barandiaran was ordained a priest in Vitoria. In 1915, he was sent to Burgos Ecclesiastical University where he graduated in Theology.

In 1916, he joined the Vitoria Seminary as a science teacher and would remain there until 1936. The folk legends that he discovered in Ataun about “Jentils buried in Aralar” led him to discover a dolmen site. The publication of those findings led him to established a long relationship with Professor Telesforo de Aranzadi and Professor Enrique Eguren. Barandiaran would then continue with his archaeological research combining this interest in prehistory with gathering ethnographic data.

In 1921, he began to publish the monthly magazine Eusko-Folklore. Materiales y Cuestionarios, which would run until 1975. That same year, he founded the Eusko-Folklore Society. The fieldwork of its members was published in the Anuario de la Sociedad de Eusko-Folklore, whose name was later changed to Anuario de Eusko-Folklore and that yearbook has survived to the present.

In 1928, in addition to the many publications to which he contributed and edited, Barandiaran began to make films, some of which were ethnographic in nature. In 1934, Volume XIV of the Anuario de Eusko Folklore published the “Questionnaire for research into folklife”, which was in response to the project to conduct a general ethnographic survey throughout the Basque Country.

In 1936, he went into exile and continued with his prehistorical and ethnographic research in the part of the Basque Country within France as he moved from town to town in that territory.

In 1946, the creation of the Ikuska/Institut Basque de Recherches saw him resume his work interrupted by the Spanish Civil and World Wars, and it would be the continuation of the two institutions that he set up in Vitoria twenty-five years earlier: the Eusko Folklore Society (1921) and the Prehistory Research Centre (1925). He also edited the Ikuska newsletter to showcase the research carried out at that institute. In 1949, as part of the Ikuska project, he began to publish a “Questionnaire for an ethnographic study of the Basque people”.

En 1953 regresó del exilio e inauguró en la Universidad de Salamanca la “Cátedra Larramendi” con un curso sobre el estado de los estudios vascos. En 1955, tras veinte años de interrupción, publicó un nuevo número del Anuario de Eusko Folklore. En 1964 se hizo cargo de la asignatura de “Etnología del pueblo vasco” dentro de la Cátedra de Lengua y Cultura vascas que se creó en la Universidad de Navarra. La regentó hasta el curso 1979-80.

En 1968 creó en la Universidad de Navarra el primer grupo Etniker. En 1970 en el volumen XXIII del Anuario de Eusko Folklore ofreció las pautas para el plan de investigación Etniker. En 1971 nació Etniker Álava y en 1972 Etniker Gipuzkoa. En 1973 en la Biblioteca Vasca del Seminario de Derio se estableció el grupo Etniker Bizkaia.

En 1974, a los 84 años, realizó sus últimas excavaciones arqueológicas en Axlor. En el volumen XXV del Anuario de Eusko-Foklore se publicó la primera parte del cuestionario etnográfico con vistas a una encuesta sistemática. Aparecieron en esta publicación los primeros trabajos llevados a cabo por miembros de Etniker. En 1975 terminó la redacción del cuestionario etnográfico general iniciado en 1968.

En 1987 los Grupos Etniker acordaron la elaboración del Atlas Etnográfico de Vasconia. En 1990 escribió el prólogo al primer volumen sobre la Alimentación doméstica dentro de este proyecto del Atlas, diseñado y dirigido por él. Fue su último escrito.

Falleció en Ataun en 1991.