ABSTRACT
Although the Basque Country has been historically divided between France and Spain, the long-standing collective identity of the Basque people endures. Football and rugby, the foreign sports that were perceived with suspicion by the incipient Basque nationalist movement, became a pillar of differentiation within Spain and France. Especially in the late-twentieth century, sport provided differentiation through the unusual autochthonous composition of the most important football clubs like Athletic Bilbao and Real Sociedad. This chapter captures the historical importance of sport in the contemporary Basque Country as a complex patriotic vector in the context of an absence of a Basque state. It deals with the marked division in the sports field between the Spanish Basque Country and the French Basque Country, where football and rugby were set up differently. This reality increased the division originally implemented for the sovereign states of Spain and France. Most recent initiatives are being put in place in order to represent and unite the Basque Country by way of sport.
