Joaldunak — the bell procession

The Joaldunak carnival falls on the Monday and Tuesday following the last Sunday of January. On the Monday the bell-bearers of Zubieta set out and walk the 3 km to Ituren; halfway they are met by the men of Ituren's Aurtitz quarter, and the joined column — forty or fifty Joaldunak carrying between eighty and a hundred bells — processes through Ituren to the square, where a communal meal seals the brotherhood of the two villages. On the Tuesday, Ituren returns the visit to Zubieta. The costume is precise and unvarying: a blue or white shirt, a lace petticoat, a sheepskin over the shoulders, a coloured neckerchief, a conical cap topped with ribbons, a horsehair switch in the hand, and strapped to the lower back two large ttunttun cowbells. The gait is the rite — a measured, hip-swinging step that makes every man's bells ring on the same beat, so the column sounds as one moving instrument. The figures are understood to wake the earth and chase the bad spirits of winter, a fertility and renewal rite that predates Christianity and has been carried unbroken in these two villages while it faded elsewhere. UNESCO recognises the wider Basque carnival tradition; here it survives at full strength, performed by the villages for themselves first and visitors second.