The Basques are considered to be one of the oldest ethnic groups in Europe, possibly the oldest. Their homeland or region lies on the border between France and Spain, in the Pyrenees mountain range. They live in three regions on the Spanish side of the mountains and three on the French side. The Basques refer to these regions, together, as Euskal-Herria, or Land of the Basques. The population of Basques is almost 3 million, but there are about one million people living the Basque regions that are of other ethnicities. In the early 1500’s, the Basques on the Spanish side won the right to a small degree of self-government, but in 1876, all the regions of the Land of the Basques were divided by the border between France and Spain. In the early
