{"id":11621,"date":"2024-03-26T17:51:33","date_gmt":"2024-03-26T16:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imagovasconiae.eus\/presentation-by-ramon-oleaga\/"},"modified":"2024-03-26T18:08:30","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T17:08:30","slug":"presentation-by-ramon-oleaga","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/imagovasconiae.eus\/en\/presentation-by-ramon-oleaga\/","title":{"rendered":"Presentation by Ram\u00f3n Oleaga"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-page\" data-elementor-id=\"11621\" class=\"elementor elementor-11621 elementor-11049\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-d1c5b1c e-flex e-con-boxed e-con e-parent\" data-id=\"d1c5b1c\" data-element_type=\"container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"e-con-inner\">\n\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-b3a4a24 e-con-full e-flex e-con e-child\" data-id=\"b3a4a24\" data-element_type=\"container\" data-settings=\"{&quot;background_background&quot;:&quot;classic&quot;}\">\n\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-b19a88e e-con-full e-flex e-con e-child\" data-id=\"b19a88e\" data-element_type=\"container\" data-settings=\"{&quot;background_background&quot;:&quot;classic&quot;}\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-a6838b1 elementor-widget elementor-widget-image\" data-id=\"a6838b1\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"image.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t<style>\/*! elementor - v3.21.0 - 18-04-2024 *\/\n.elementor-widget-image{text-align:center}.elementor-widget-image a{display:inline-block}.elementor-widget-image a img[src$=\".svg\"]{width:48px}.elementor-widget-image img{vertical-align:middle;display:inline-block}<\/style>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"945\" height=\"623\" src=\"https:\/\/imagovasconiae.eus\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Ramon-Oleaga-Paramo.webp\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-image-11051\" alt=\"Ram\u00f3n Oleaga P\u00e1ramo\" srcset=\"https:\/\/imagovasconiae.eus\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Ramon-Oleaga-Paramo.webp 945w, https:\/\/imagovasconiae.eus\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Ramon-Oleaga-Paramo-300x198.webp 300w, https:\/\/imagovasconiae.eus\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Ramon-Oleaga-Paramo-600x396.webp 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 945px) 100vw, 945px\" \/>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-1099eb9 e-con-full e-flex e-con e-child\" data-id=\"1099eb9\" data-element_type=\"container\" data-settings=\"{&quot;background_background&quot;:&quot;gradient&quot;}\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-c90ee5c elementor-widget elementor-widget-hub_fancy_heading\" data-id=\"c90ee5c\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"hub_fancy_heading.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<div id=\"ld-fancy-heading-6acce5b15fe0e\" class=\"ld-fancy-heading pos-rel\">\n\t\t\t<h2 class=\"ld-fh-element d-inline-block pos-rel  elementor-heading-title lqd-highlight-classic lqd-highlight-grow-left h2\"  > Ram\u00f3n Oleaga P\u00e1ramo<\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-8a80fcc elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"8a80fcc\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t<style>\/*! elementor - v3.21.0 - 18-04-2024 *\/\n.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-stacked .elementor-drop-cap{background-color:#69727d;color:#fff}.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-framed .elementor-drop-cap{color:#69727d;border:3px solid;background-color:transparent}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap{margin-top:8px}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap-letter{width:1em;height:1em}.elementor-widget-text-editor .elementor-drop-cap{float:left;text-align:center;line-height:1;font-size:50px}.elementor-widget-text-editor .elementor-drop-cap-letter{display:inline-block}<\/style>\t\t\t\t<p>Bilbao, 1958. Studies in law, economics and history at the University of Deusto and the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU). He has since collaborated with various museums, cataloguing their historical cartography and has served as an exhibition organizer to showcase said materials. He has authored publications such as <em>Plasentia de Butr\u00f3n-Plen\u00adtzia: Cartograf\u00eda Antigua<\/em> (2000), <em>Bilboko Estanpak 1575-1860<\/em> (2000), <em>Euskal Herria Museoa: Kartografia Bilduma<\/em> (2010), <em>Durangaldeko kartografia = Cartograf\u00eda hist\u00f3rica de la Merindad de Durango<\/em> (2015), among others, and was in charge of the chapters related to the historic representation of the territory in <em>Historia de Euskal Herria<\/em> (1st volume, 2005) and \u201c<em>Bizkaia kartografian<\/em>\u201d, part of the work <em>Bizkaiko Foru Aldundiaren historia. 1500-2014<\/em> (2014).<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-0a7f504 e-con-full e-flex e-con e-child\" data-id=\"0a7f504\" data-element_type=\"container\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-afbf5e9 elementor-widget elementor-widget-hub_fancy_heading\" data-id=\"afbf5e9\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"hub_fancy_heading.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<div id=\"ld-fancy-heading-6acce5b161330\" class=\"ld-fancy-heading pos-rel\">\n\t\t\t<h2 class=\"ld-fh-element d-inline-block pos-rel  elementor-heading-title lqd-highlight-classic lqd-highlight-grow-left h2\"  > The Basque Country and the maps<\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-e7aac05 elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"e7aac05\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p>The first reaction when thumbing through a work, such as the one the curious reader has in his or her hands, is to look upon it as a mere ornamental element. This work, because of its neat presence, might as well decorate a coffee table but this is certainly not its intention. This publication, apart from its objective beauty, aims at much more. It aims to offer the kind of cartography that, over time, has shown the territory known as Basque Country \u2013 Vasconia, meaning the historical-anthropological region that today makes up the Basque Autonomous Community, the Autonomous Community of Navarre and the Communaut\u00e9 d&#8217;Agglom\u00e9ration du Pays Basque. A territory geographically delimited, broadly speaking, by the rivers Adour in the north and the Ebro in the south and ranging from Lanestosa in the west to Ospitalepea in the east, the area in which Basque culture has developed throughout historical times. Its ultimate aim, therefore, is not just aesthetic but fundamentally cultural as well.<\/p><p>We intend to reflect the land or country of the Basques and their territory. We also intend to reflect how they have seen themselves, or rather, as we shall see later on, how they have been seen by third parties. And in order to do this, so as to finally settle this point, we shall turn to cartographic sources. We shall see the way in which this territory has been reflected, one in which dozens of generations have developed their culture, often without having a clear idea of the physiognomy of the environment in which they lived, beyond their own valley, plain or river bank.<\/p><p>The idea for the publication came from Jose Mari Esparza who had already delved into the field of cartography with particular success in previous works and who made a proposal to me that involved completing a corpus, compiled by him, which was already quite extensive at that time, with a vision which we might call a \u201chistoricalcartographic\u201d vision.<\/p><p>In order to select materials, the catalogues of the libraries and museums of the Basque Country, of the National Library of Spain have been combed through as well as those of very diverse and specialised institutions, among which the Cartographic Institute of Catalonia and the Spanish National Geographic Institute deserve a special mention. In addition to all of the above, we consulted the collections of the national libraries of several other countries around us (i.e. France, England, Portugal, etc.) as well as various private collections both in our country and abroad. The David Rumsey Collection stands out among them.<\/p><p>In a first selection, we can find a few thousand examples in which, one way or another, on a greater or lesser scale, our territory was reflected. From the oldest small-scale examples in which labelling of place names boiled down to a single reference, to the most modern examples in which information of all kinds is abundantly available in highly detailed maps.<\/p><p>Based on this first rough approximation, a more nuanced selection was undertaken, thereby resulting in a corpus of just over 800 maps which, in one way or another, reflected our environment cartographically. Finally, a \u201csurvey\u201d was carried out for all of these in order to grade their relevance for the purpose of this work. In the oldest examples, any mere generic reference which accredited an \u201centry into history\u201d of this corner of south-western Europe was deemed sufficient, while, in the more recent ones, there came a need for the cartographic work to focus either on the entire territory of the Basque Country \u2013 Vasconia or, specifically, on some of its parts, so as to avoid, in any case, the incorporation of detailed maps or city maps.<\/p><p>As a result of the aforementioned \u201csurvey\u201d, the approximately 300 examples which, in our opinion, characterise the representation of our country throughout history, were finally selected and meticulous research was begun on them. It should not be forgotten that most of them were published as part of a larger work, be it an atlas, a travel book, a geography book or any other book, even though they might have come down to us as loose sheets of paper. Moreover, many others, especially the more recent ones from the end of the 18th century onwards, were printed and marketed separately.<\/p><p>The aim was to link each map to the work of provenance and, within it, to the time when a first edition or \u201cstate\u201d of the map in question was published. As a result of this analysis, a detailed file has been completed for each of the maps that we are finally publishing in which, together with the analysis of the author and his contextualisation to produce the specific map under study, the actual publication date of the first state of each plate is traced back. Indeed, within the field of cartography, the indiscriminate use of pre-existing plates is common in works that were often published centuries apart, as the high cost of engraving a plate and printing the print made it necessary to use and reuse, practically on an indefinite basis, the same image, whose authorship is discreetly retouched or the date of when it was printed is etched out in order to cover up the fact that its content is out of date.<\/p><p>For all these reasons, the cataloguing of cartographic materials is, to say the least, an arduous task. In our research, on more occasions than we might like, we have found that a given map is catalogued in different ways by different institutions. Or that even none of them correspond to the dates or authorship which the body of reference material (Koeman, Pastoreau, etc.) deems as possible. It is also true that the current development of digitalising libraries has allowed us to access a multitude of materials in a way that, only 20 years ago, would have required us to travel around the world&#8230; and not exactly in 80 days. In short, no cataloguing has been definitively \u201ctaken for granted\u201d and, in every case, at least a double confirmation of the information published has been sought. This extensive research, which is now in print, have been reduced to a brief\u00a0 ap caption with a mention of authorship, place, date and a brief commentary in order to allow for a better understanding of the map in question, but it may be incorporated in subsequent publications of a more technical nature.<\/p><p>The history of the representation of our territory is similar to the current digital geographic search engines in the sense that, in the earliest times, it started from a distant, broad, small-scale point of view, encompassing not only those places that we currently identify as our territory but also, rather more imprecisely, other surrounding areas. On these small scales, the labelling can even encompass the north of the Iberian Peninsula or spill over into Aquitaine. As we move forward in historical times, the maps zoom in and improve scales and details, just like a photographic \u201czoom\u201d function.<\/p><p>The improvement in the quality of representation is linked to several factors. Firstly, whatever the actual knowledge of the territory, the reproduction techniques were both laborious and expensive. One might think of an artistic original, meticulously drawn, which provided the matrix of the examples given to the printers. Unfortunately, apart from a few maps provided in legal disputes, no manuscript map of the country as a whole, or even of any of its components, has survived until well into the 18th century. The state of the art of reproduction of these unknown originals is the other stumbling block we encounter; whether by using the woodcut block technique or the copper-plate intaglio technique, the printing process of these maps requires the carving of a print block matrix and its stamping, which implies a technical skill which, until practically the arrival of the 19th century, was available to only a few printers.<\/p><p>It is appropriate to anticipate that, until very recently, we lack maps that aim to show, in a specific way, what history has called Euskal Herria (Basque Country, the land of the Basques) \u2013 Vasconia for several centuries. For the oldest maps, this has led us to show those European or Peninsular maps which, within a much broader framework, reflect our reality. Already in the 17th century, the publication of regional maps began in which, with imprecise limits and with great geographical distortion in many cases, the geographer&#8217;s eye began to \u201capproach\u201d our territory. In those moments, a geographer would always be someone foreign to the Country, without the local origin of some of his information being documented, although, for some maps, it is evident that the foreign author could have counted on local informants. Throughout the 18th century, as we take a very brief look through the material, we move from those maps of a wider focus to another detail that, both for the peninsular territories and beyond the Pyrenees, focuses on unitary maps for each of the great units.<\/p><p>In the 19th century, continuous warfare, starting in the Napoleonic period and the successive interventions in the Iberian Peninsula, followed by the Carlist wars, resulted in a very rich cartography owing much both to the operational needs of armies and to the information demanded by citizens. On the other hand, from the mid-19th century onwards, a new awareness of training and information of the elites came about, which led, on both sides of the Pyrenees, to the publication of different provincial atlases which included each territorial unit in detail. In the last third of the century, we have examples that are strictly cultural and usually linked to the study of the Basque language, whose focus of representation is precisely the whole of our territory.<\/p><p>In the 20th century, examples proliferated. From 1918 onwards, the impetus given to Basque culture by Basque Studies congresses made it possible to bring about a cultural awareness that was reflected in cartography. In the last quarter of the century, and continuing on up to the present day, we find, on the one hand, the official cartography of the different government administrations and, on the other, from an all-embracing point of view, very diverse publications that feature maps that both culturally and geographically reflect the whole of the Basque Country-Vasconia.<\/p><p>When reading this work, we must be alert and make use of our critical capacities; we must be aware of some realities that elude the strictly technical-cartographic formulation and which, in practice, reach people, because maps are rarely innocent.<\/p><p>Cartography is a powerful weapon and, as such, it may be used for instrumental purposes by detaching it from whatever its initial objective pretensions were and by linking it to other purposes. Cartography is not simply a visual representation of a territory; it goes beyond that and plays a relevant role in the construction of mental realities and human perceptions of the world around us. Through the graphic representation of geographical, political, social and cultural features on maps, new mental realities are generated and shaped which influence how people understand, interact with and relate to the territory.<\/p><p>Maps, by defining geographical or political boundaries, play a major role in the construction of identity and belonging, whatever these may be. The borders drawn in each specific example can influence the formation of national and regional identities; they can help consolidate the cultural ties shared by different communities while generating a sense of rootedness and belonging of individuals to a specific territory. Correlatively, they can also influence the formation of social prejudices and perceptions, thereby reinforcing existing stereotypes and cultural constructs, ultimately characterising public opinion and political and economic decision-making, territorial administration and power-sharing.<\/p><p>In recognising the impact of cartography on the construction of mental realities and the creation of cultural narratives, it is important to critically analyse the hundreds of examples we offer and consider how they might be influencing our understanding of territory and, ultimately, ourselves as a people.<\/p><p>With that critical caveat in place, we can only sit back and embark on a centuries-long journey on paper in order to take in the diversity of our territory from the comfort of our living rooms.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ram\u00f3n Oleaga P\u00e1ramo Bilbao, 1958. Studies in law, economics and history at the University of Deusto and the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU). He has since collaborated with various museums, cataloguing their historical cartography and has served as an exhibition organizer to showcase said materials. He has authored publications such as Plasentia de Butr\u00f3n-Plen\u00adtzia: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11495,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-11621","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imagovasconiae.eus\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11621"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imagovasconiae.eus\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imagovasconiae.eus\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagovasconiae.eus\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagovasconiae.eus\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11621"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/imagovasconiae.eus\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11632,"href":"https:\/\/imagovasconiae.eus\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11621\/revisions\/11632"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagovasconiae.eus\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imagovasconiae.eus\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}