Peio Ospital is from Espelette, Pantxoa Carrère is from Ascain, and it was very young, still children, that they met and became friends.
In their twenties, they launched into song, in Basque, following the example of Michel Labéguerie or Manex Pagola.
At that time, the political situation in the Basque Country was extremely tense, with Franco’s dictatorship on the one hand, very repressive and brutal, and on the other, ETA, created in 1959, an organization which had become an army which fought for the independence of the Basque Country.
In 1968, Peio eta Pantxoa met Telesforo Monzon, exiled in Saint Jean de Luz, a Basque politician, who also wrote theater and poetry: he offered the duo some of his committed texts, which denounced the situation suffered in the Basque Country. .
“Itziarren Semea”: story of torture, chilling testimony
“Itziarren Semea” is the first political song sung by Peio eta Pantxoa.
It recounts the ordeal of Basque activist Andoni Arrizabalaga, arrested in 1968, and tortured for 8 days in the Spanish police and Guardia Civil police stations.
The text details the violence inflicted on him, the song is constructed in the form of a dialogue between Arrizabalaga and his mother, “who does not recognize him and asks him what they did to him”.
In 1977, when Andoni Arrizabalaga, after several years of imprisonment, was finally released, Peio and Pantxoa were able to perform on stage, in his presence, this song which had become emblematic over the years.