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Texto reemplazado: «<sup>th</sup> century» por «th century»
When the girls and boys reach sixteen or seventeen years old, they join the group of “the young people”. They remain in this age category until they marry. This rite of passage is called “becoming a youth”, ''mutiletan sartu'', in Navarra. The passage from child to youth is marked by certain facts affecting behaviour, the most important of which is they no longer play games.
Until the mid 20<sup>th</sup> 20th century, this transition involved changes to the very clothes worn. It was the time when the young men began to wear long trousers. Nowadays, this change in the way of dressing is irrelevant as children wear long trousers from a very early age. In the past, once they reached this age, girls stopped wearing socks and started using stockings and mid-heeled shoes. They also stopped wearing their hair in ponytails, plaits and ringlets, with ribbons, ''txoriak'', and started to wear their hair loose or in a bun. When young girls were around 16, they would put up their hair and cover it with a headscarf to show they were grown up (Abadiano-B).
In traditional society, youths would enter the world of work as apprentices learning a trade or as servants; they could represent their homestead at neighbourhood meetings and take part in communal work, ''auzolana.'' They left the children’s benches at church and sat in a place further away from the altar.
The period of life in education has been significantly extended since the mid 20<sup>th</sup> 20th century. Therefore, the years as youths now coincide, in the majority of cases, with those spent studying degrees and professions.
On the other hand, if childhood is characterised by play activity, the time of youths is noted for interest in romantic relationships. The singing in the round, festivities and dances in their many different forms would be places where young people of both sexes would meet.
Basque male youths were required to do military service, which meant leaving their natural environment for a long period of time, which marked a stage of their life.
== The moceria [youth association]. herriko Herriko gazteria ==
The local young people of a similar age and with shared aspirations would spontaneously spend time together and form the ''mocería'' of the town or village. "The ''mocería''" has become a specific social group with its own patterns of behaviour.
In Obanos (N), single men wore white canvas shoes on Sundays, while married men would wear black or blue.
== The dance. dantza Dantza ==
Dances on Sundays and bank holidays were held in the public square and ended at dusk in the surveyed locations. They would only carry on until midnight on the festivities to celebrate the feast day of the patron saint.
They started dancing as a “game”, of a different type and purpose than children’s ones, where both sexes began to mix as they had mainly played separately up until then.
== Compulsory military service. soldadutza Soldadutza ==
Once they turned eighteen or twenty, the young men were required to join the armed forces for a certain period of time. There were very few young men who were spared this obligation in the past. Apart from the cases of a declared illness, grounds for exemption were physical defects such as myopia, flat feet or short stature; the only sons of widows also did not have to do military service.
