ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that travel and tourism between the Basque Country and the diaspora help drive cultural maintenance, exploration, and expression of identity while serving as economic generators. The relationship between the Basque Country and its diaspora is a government priority, and while technology can greatly aid transnational relationship communication, it takes travel for members of the mother country and the diaspora to together continually evolve the “Basque identity”. Ireland emphasizes the role that genealogy plays in identity formation and maintenance in the diaspora. Americans traveling to the Basque Country in the 1960s and ’70s were often shocked by what they saw, the result of civil war and decades of political and social oppression. In the eradication of the language, Franco was at least partially successful. Those forced from the Basque Country due to political persecution and economic depravity could reconnect with their homeland in unprecedented ways.
