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Since the 1950s, the traditional funeral rite has undergone far-reaching changes in Iparralde (the part of the Basque Country within France) and continues to do so at an ever-increasing rate. Some of them, already irreversible, are above all testament to a social order and a view of the world that are very alien to the new generations. However, a significant part of the rituals survives, but they are often mere “points of reference” and “organisational frames” lingering in people’s memory. But for how long?
The coastal strip can be seen to have totally broken away from the inland area. There, death is dealt with outside the context of the home, ''etxe,'' , and of the framework that forms a neighbour-based society. As regards Christians, here more than anywhere else, they have to embrace their faith in the midst of indifference, in the best of cases.
These are the three avenues that we have explored and particularly the first, namely, the state of the current funeral rite in the mountains, the lowland areas inland and the coastal strip. We have focused on painstakingly describing the practices and its versions; we have sought to highlight relations between individuals and between situations (in order to see how the neighbourhood-based society that underpins our culture is expressed, but which today, has not awoken any interest in the ethnology of Iparralde). We have explored the urbanised environment along the coast in its more advanced aspect on the way to “modernisation”. We have here and there noted recent changes, but our intention has always been to portray the world in which our parents still conducted their daily lives; that is the testament that we sought to build, as a solid pillar, and to which we dedicate the summary.