Zenbat Gara was founded as a cultural organisation to act as a catalyst for the Basque language community through a variety of different activities. Bilbao, the largest of the cities in the Basque Country, with a total population of 350,000 people of which around 50,000 were Euskara speakers and a further 80,000 had some knowledge of the language, was purposely selected as the location for the organisation since the actual use of Euskara in the city was highly uncommon. Conse-quently, the decision was then taken to work towards the integration of the Basque community in Bilbao in line with the previously mentioned objectives and aligned to the philosophy of:

a) Providing a place where Euskara speakers can express themselves within their own social, cultural, artistic and leisure environment.

b) Eradicating, through the joint efforts of all involved, the inferiority and minority complexes felt by most Euskara speakers.

c) Providing a place for all those people learning or re-learning Euskara to actively practice the language.

d) Showing the rest of the population that the Basque language and culture welcomes and embraces both their own and all other cultures of the world. The global objective is one of promoting the values of life itself, values which encompass and involve all of us, within a framework of liberty, equality, solidarity and mutual respect.

These objectives are being met. The present-day reality of the Zenbat Gara movement and the programmes originating from it is such that the Association is now regarded as a reference and meeting point for the Euskara speaking community in Bilbao.

The Association's premises occupy a seven-floor building in the centre of Bilbao, from where all its activities are designed and developed through a series of associated cooperative companies. To date, the existence of these companies and activities has given rise to the creation of 140 jobs.
One of these cooperative companies, entitled Kafe Antzokia, is an old cinema converted into a coffeehouse/theatre with room for 1000 people. Kafe Antzokia organises a wide variety of cultural events, ranging from concerts featuring both Basque and international artists to theatre productions and the launching of both books and records published and released in Euskara. Over 150 cultural events are organised and laid on by Kafe Antzokia in the course of a year.

A second Kafe Antzokia was opened by Zenbat Gara on April 12, 2002, in the coastal town of Ondarroa, some 50 kilometres from Bilbao. The characteristics and objectives of this project are similar to those of the Kafe Antzokia in Bilbao, though 90% of the Ondarroa population are Euskara speakers. The major difference between the two projects is that the main aim in Ondarroa, a majority Euskara speaking town, is to bring together the local language community and to regenerate Arts events in the town.

Another organisation forming part of the Zenbat Gara Association is Gabriel Aresti, an adult learning centre for the teaching of Euskara. The centre caters for around 1,500 students each term, applying a methodology based from the outset on introducing the student to the real use of the language and the culture which surrounds it. In this way, the language learner becomes an active participant in the Basque community.

30 different activity workshops are conducted on the Zenbat Gara premises, ranging from dance, theatre and Basque folk singing to computer studies, serigraphy and D.I.Y, amongst others. All these activities are taught and conducted in Euskara, offering Euskara speakers the possibility to practice and learn more about their hobbies whilst simultaneously building relationships with like-minded people.

On a different note, Bilbo Hiria Irratia, a radio station broadcasting exclusively in Euskara in the Bilbao urban area, is another cooperative of the Zenbat Gara Association. Amongst other subjects, the radio station broadcasts programmes of a cultural, social and alternative nature. Zenbat Gara media activities also include the publication of a magazine carrying the name of the Association, in which it expresses its philosophy and editorial line to a wider audience. Gara, the recently founded publishing house, performs a similar function.

The graphic design cooperative Atoan is responsible for meeting the media and image-related requirements of the cooperatives within the Zenbat Gara Association. Additionally, Atoan collaborates with many Basque Country companies which carry out their operational activities in Euskara.

Olgetan, an organisation for young children, and Zaparrada, a youth organisation, are two further examples of projects promoted by Zenbat Gara. In this case, both organisations offer leisure and educational activities throughout the year to young people, including theatre, puppet shows, magic, dance, a music academy, Euskara summer camps, etc. The programme of youth activities is organised by the teenagers themselves, who have free access to and use of the Association's resources and infrastructure.

In the hotel sector, Zenbat Gara manages the Arrigorri Maritime Hostelry in Ondarroa, a small hotel accommodating a maximum 90 people. In addition to accommodation and restaurant facilities, the hotel also offers its guests the opportunity of first-hand contact with the Basque culture through a programme of organised visits, excursions, workshops, etc. The Arrigorri Hostelry is also used as a congress and conference centre for events related with Basque culture.

Similarly, the Association also manages a large country house in the village of Bakaiku, Navarre, with room for up to 100 people. This hostel-type residence is mainly used for adult courses in language and culture and for youth summer camps.

Finally, Zenbat Gara has an active presence in all the "fiestas" held in Bilbao through a 500-strong group of people which come together under the name Algara. The purpose of this group is to provide the Euskara speaking community in Bilbao with their own platform for expression within the "fiestas".

All the cooperatives and programmes described above are self-managed and, in the mayority of cases, self-financing. The organisation of the cooperatives is based on the day-to-day experience of the participants, whose roles within the team are specifically adapted and shaped to their particular skills, abilities and interest areas. Organisational charts and hierarchies therefore have no place within Zenbat Gara, as each member of the Association is responsible for deciding to what degree and in what area of the Association's activities they are capable of contributing. This operational philosophy is, in all cases, underpinned by a policy of individual liberty, equality and mutual respect and recognition.

In short, Zenbat Gara is an open and dynamic project, continually generating creative energy and constantly in search of new communication channels and ways to fulfil its vision on both a collective and individual basis. The Basque language, like every other world language, is not an abstract entity existing outside of our everyday reality, but a vital need in the everyday lives of its speakers. Everything we do is language; at a time when the established order should be making way for new, ecolinguistic values, Zenbat Gara is striving to make Basque language and culture the bearers of new values of liberty, equality and solidarity. A new book published by the Association attempts to encompass all these ideas.

3.- "OREKAN, Herri eta Hizkuntzen ekologiaz", A BOOK ON THE ECOLOGICAL AND DEMOCRATIC EQUILIBRIUM OF LANGUAGES

The main aim of the book "OREKAN, Herri eta Hizkuntzen ekologiaz" (IN EQUILIBRIUM; the ecology of Peoples and Languages) is to make the currently existing work and opinion on the loss/recovery of languages -and specifically the Basque language- more readily available to the public at large.

To do this, the book is divided into two parts, the second of which is dedicated to the dissemination of the work of Professor José Mª Sánchez Carrión "Txepetx", and more specifically of his doctoral thesis entitled "A Future for our Past: the keys to the recovery of Euskara and a social theory of Languages" (1987). We believe this thesis to be the best available theoretical framework for understanding the reasons and mechanisms behind a community ceasing to use its own language and adopting a different one. The book analyses the different forms of bilingualism and diglossia from an original perspective, making a clear distinction between the two categories (a distinction which is often intentionally blurred). The different factors which influence the life cycle of languages thus become clear, enabling the reader to understand why a language disappears (or, more often than not, is made to disappear) and identifying the conditions necessary for the process to be reversed. The book is based on sound, democratic principles, in which absolutely all the languages of the world are afforded the same category and importance and given the same prestige, regardless of whether they are spoken by 1,000 million people or a mere two hundred. All languages toge-ther form part of The Human Language, of human diversity, and represent the greatest living, irreplaceable cultural heritage of mankind.

The work of Professor José Mª Sánchez Carrión is unknown outside of the Basque Country, but it should also be made clear here that his work is not commonly read, other than by specialists, even in the Basque Country. However, since his work is certainly of special interest for the public at large, explaining as it does the reality of the situation in which we live, the decision was taken by Zenbat Gara to publish this version of the thesis.

If this had been its sole content, the book would undoubtedly have been catalogued as a socio-linguistic work, with the connotations of specialization that this implies. This was precisely what Zenbat Gara wanted to avoid; our intention was to present an argument refuting the idea that some languages -minority ones, coincidentally- are dispensable, as if they were tools "invented" with a perverse political intention to single out tribal or group differences. To do so, it is necessary to tell the story of Human Language, of all languages, in the context of how they have arisen, developed and evolved... in other words, the scenario of life on Earth, as languages are an intrinsic part of the nature of life.

All of which leads us to ecology. What are the limits of ecology? Can human diversity be explained as a natural phenomenon? What exactly does that diversity consist of? One thing that has been proved beyond doubt from studies on the human gene pattern is that the question of racial differences in humans is purely arbitrary, and in fact does not exist. If the human gene pattern contains between 35 and 40,000 genes, then to state exactly how many genes "determine" a race is reduced to little more than an arbitrary action. Human diversity lies in its languages, or in other words, in its cultures.

Language is inseparable from people: it cannot live without someone using it, and the individual expresses himself through language. Language speakers represent languages themselves, and to speak of linguistic rights is to speak of Human Rights, of the development and global expression of the individual as a human being, an inexorable part of which is his language.

The book "OREKAN" discusses all these ideas, explaining and propagating the conditions for Mankind -the trustee of all languages- to live and evolve in harmony, in a context of mutual respect and in peace, above and beyond the exclusive and merely socio-linguistic framework of the specialists.
In addition, the book is also the product of the concern of Zenbat Gara to contribute to clarifying the situation of the Basque language and people, a statement which conveniently summarizes the philosophy and lines of action which lie at the heart of this initiative.