Tuesday, June 30, 2009

The Basque Weather Forecast

You wouldn't have thought that the weather forecast on television could really be that great a source of controversy, but with the change of government in the Basque Country comes a change in the map that viewers will see when they want to know how hard it will rain tomorrow in Bilbao. When the nationalists were in power someone decided that viewers of ETB, the Basque regional TV channel, should see a weather map that includes Navarra and the French Basque Country too. In other words, the entire area of what nationalists regard as historically being part of Basque territory. With the change of administration comes a change in those who run all of those organisations that depend on the regional government, ETB included. The winds of change mean the weather map should also change, but then the dilemma has been how to make the change without completely offending nationalist sentiment by excluding Navarra and the French areas. It seems the solution adopted will be to show half of northern Spain and the frontier area with France on the grounds that Basques also want to know about the weather in La Rioja or Burgos for their weekend getaways. Expect sunny intervals with frequent showers if you're near the coast.

3 comments:

Troy said...

While not the same, it does remind me of the very dark region below Galicia and to the west of Extremadura on the national broadcasts.

Graeme said...

What I want to know is whether Olivenza/Olivença features on the weather map on both sides of the frontier?

Starhound said...

I'm not sure it's the prize that the PP were looking for when they started putting the boot into EiTB during the election campaign and then making demands from PPatxi.
I think they wanted it red and gold with the legend 'Espana;' across it...

Note how the map neatly separates Iparralde into one region separate from France and the presenters go on saying 'Euskal Herria' anyway.

Is this the first thing that the PP/ PSOE 'Gobierno de Cambio' has achieved then?