ABSTRACT
The meaning of the term ‘Basque Country’ may not always be as straightforward as one might believe, as it can mean different things to different speakers depending on their political stance. From a purely linguistic and cultural perspective, it refers to the speakers of the Basque language living in a region that straddles the national border between France and Spain along the Pyrenees mountains. This area is divided into three different political entities: The Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) and Navarre in Spain, and the Northern Basque Country in France. According to the Basque Government (2019), in 2016 the territory of the Basque language had a total population of over 3,130,000 inhabitants, 28.4% of whom were Basque speakers, 16.4% passive Basque speakers – who can speak or understand some Basque, and 55.2% non-Basque speakers – those who can neither understand nor speak it. In this chapter, I will focus on the BAC because 70% of the Basque population live in it (Basque Government, 2019), which means that the situation of this autonomous community (one of the 17 that make up Spain) clearly determines the reading for the Basque Country as a whole. In addition, the vast majority of the research carried out on EMI in Basque higher education institutions has been undertaken in the BAC. The BAC consists of three provinces: Araba (whose capital is Vitoria-Gasteiz), Bizkaia (Bilbao-Bilbo), and Gipuzkoa (San Sebastián-Donostia).
