ABSTRACT
Starting with an apocalyptic image, this chapter outlines some of the historical and anthropological aspects of a political device par excellence, the Tree of Gernika, or Gernikako Arbola, as it is known in Euskara. It attempts to work with this unavoidable subject largely told through the story of the Tree, but the author must admit his awareness of the simplifications contained in any such brief account. The medieval economic, political and legal existence of the Basque traditional regions was governed by the institution of fueros—‘collections of local laws and customs’. Romanticizing of medieval history is a common theme to many nationalist productions. Gernikako Arbola is ‘full of agency’, not least because the roles ‘embedded into it’ semiautonomously enter a spectacle of communication with humans—a spectacle that creates bilateral imprints. A combination of anthropomorphic and arboreal qualities of Gernikako Arbola suggests various kinship strategies, most of all the insistence on durability and continuation.
