Hello, I'm a Chilean descendant of Basques. I've a question regarding basque culture and heritage (of which I unfortunately know too little). Have basque authorities contemplated the declining population with low TFR and how it will impact the continuation of customs and most importantly, the language?
I haven't heard much discussion connecting the declining population to the preservation of the culture. Generally, since the criminalization of the basque language during the dictatorship, most of the focus has been in encouraging the existing population to engage in the culture and the language.
This effort has been relatively successful. A significant majority of students do all their studies, including university, fully in basque (>75%, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language#/media/File:Ir...). There are many families that exclusively speak basque at home. And traditional basque public holidays and sports are prominent, popular, and frequent throughout the year.
There is a serious concern however, that Basque is becoming entrenched into a language only for education, bureaucracy and family life. It is much less popular in the streets and between friends, especially in the capitals of the provinces. This is partially affected by the significant reduction in funding for basque TV, films and dubbing, especially when it comes to cartoons for young children, as well as sketch comedy, which were so influential to my generation (funnily enough, basque dubbed anime was quite big!).
Nevertheless, the fertility-rate in the Basque country has actually been one of the lowest in Europe for the last few years. The conversation around it is more about the economy than culture. It is already seriously affecting primary schools, which are starting to compete a lot more and some are closing down. There are bigger problems in the public conscience lately (COVID, Ukraine, Energy Crisis...), and it will take at least another generation for the consequences of the low fertility rate to be felt, but there is an awareness of looming demographic trouble.
