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152-662: The Cagots ( pronounced [ka.ɡo] ) were a persecuted minority who lived in the west of France and northern Spain: the Navarrese Pyrenees , Basque provinces, Béarn , Aragón , Gascony and Brittany . Evidence of the group exists as far back as 1000 CE. The name they were known by varied across the regions where they lived. The origins of the Cagots remain uncertain, with various hypotheses proposed throughout history. Some theories suggest they were descendants of biblical or legendary figures cursed of God, or

304-632: A silver standard in Assyria increased its attractiveness (the tribute from Phoenician cities was assessed in silver). The invention of coinage in the seventh century BC spurred the search for bronze and silver as well. Henceforth trade connections, formerly largely in elite goods, assumed an increasingly broad economic role. By the Late Bronze Age, silver extraction in Huelva Province reached industrial proportions. Pre-Roman silver slag

456-544: A writing system , identified as Tartessian, that includes some 97 inscriptions in a Tartessian language . In the historical records, Tartessos ( ‹See Tfd› Greek : Ταρτησσός ) appears as a semi-mythical or legendary harbor city and the surrounding culture on the south coast of the Iberian Peninsula (in modern Andalusia , Spain), at the mouth of the Guadalquivir . It appears in sources from Greece and

608-455: A Cagot. They were not allowed to enter taverns or use public fountains. The marginalization of the Cagots began at baptism where chimes were not rung in celebration as was the case for non-Cagots and that the baptisms were held at nightfall. Within parish registries the term cagot , or its scholarly synonym gezitan , was entered. Cagots were buried in cemeteries separate from non-Cagots with reports of riots occurring if bishops tried to have

760-614: A basically rural economy. In 1932, a Basque Country 's separate statute failed to take off over disagreements on the centrality of Catholicism, a scene of political radicalisation ensued dividing the leftist and rightist forces during the 2nd Spanish Republic (1931 – 1939). Thousands of landless labourers occupied properties of wealthy landowners in October 1933, leaving the latter eager for revenge. The most reactionary and clerical Carlists came to prominence, ideologues such as Víctor Pradera , and an understanding with General Mola paved

912-575: A city of the same name. The river, which is the largest in Iberia and tidal, those of a later day called Baetis and there are some who think that Tartessus was the ancient name of Carpia , a city of the Iberians . The river known in his day as the Baetis is now the Guadalquivir . Thus, Tartessos may be buried, Schulten thought, under the shifting wetlands. The river delta has gradually been blocked by

1064-472: A culture of their own, but very little of it was written down or preserved; as a result, almost everything that is known about them relates to their persecution. The repression lasted through the Middle Ages , Renaissance , and Industrial Revolution , with the prejudice fading only in the 19th and 20th centuries. Philosopher Jacob Rogozinski  [ fr ] highlights how even from as far back as

1216-709: A deadlocked government. The regional president, widely questioned in Navarre as of 2012 and relying only on the PP central government's backup, went on to urge the Constitutional Court to challenge several decisions made by the Parliament of Navarre . After the latest scandal and corruption allegations affecting a secretary of her cabinet (Lourdes Goicoechea, regional public finance secretary) in February 2014,

1368-472: A distinct ethnic or religious group, but a racialised caste. They spoke the same language as the people in an area and generally kept the same religion as well, with later researchers remarking that there was no evidence to mark the Cagots as distinct from their neighbours. Their only distinguishing feature was their descent from families long identified as Cagots. Various legends placed the Cagots as originating from biblical events, including being descendants of

1520-486: A hand nailed to the church door in Quimperlé , Brittany, where in the 18th century, a wealthy Cagot had his hand cut off and nailed to the church door for daring to touch the font reserved for "clean" citizens. Cagots were not allowed to marry non-Cagots leading to forced endogamy , though in some areas in the later centuries (such as Béarn ) they were able to marry non-Cagots though the non-Cagot would then be classed as

1672-540: A late Bronze Age pattern of circular or oval huts scattered on a village site to rectangular houses with dry-stone foundations and plastered wattle and daub walls took place during the seventh and sixth centuries BC, in settlements with planned layouts that succeeded one another on the same site. At Cástulo ( Jaén ), a mosaic of river pebbles from the end of the sixth century BC is the earliest mosaic in Western Europe. Most sites were inexplicably abandoned in

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1824-548: A long-running demand of education unions. In July 2018, the Constitutional Court of Spain suspended the Far Right's and Civil Servants' Victims Act passed by the Parliament of Navarre in 2015. Three months later, the chief executive officer of the National Police in Navarre stepped down for the disclosure of a fake Twitter account he owned that praised Antonio Tejero , as well as Vox leader Santiago Abascal as

1976-659: A majority. A continuation of the institutional framework inherited from the dictatorship and its accommodation into the Spanish democracy was guaranteed by the Betterment ("Amejoramiento"), a Navarre-only solution considered 'an upgrade' of its former status issued from the (remains of the) charters. In a three-year span, the Spanish Socialists in Navarre veered in their position, quit the Basque process, and joined

2128-553: A new Jose Antonio , also insulting a number of Catalan and Basque nationalist and leftist figures. In October 2019, the High Court of Navarre ruled against the public use of bilingual signalling and institutional announcements in Mixed-Speaking and Non-Basque Speaking areas, also proscribing the consideration of Basque as a merit in job positions, unless strictly needed; the judgement sparked an uproar among some parties in

2280-612: A possible origin of agote . The alleged physical appearance and ethnicity of the Cagots varied wildly between legends and stories; some local legends (especially those that held to the leper theory) indicated that Cagots had blonde hair and blue eyes, while those favouring the Arab descent story said that Cagots were considerably darker. In Pío Baroja 's work Las horas solitarias , he comments that Cagot residents of Bozate  [ es ] had both individuals with "Germanic" features as well as individuals with "Romani" features, this

2432-414: A red representation of a goose's foot in fabric sewn onto their clothes. Whilst in Navarre a court ruling in 1623 required all Cagots to wear cloaks with a yellow trim to identify them as Cagots. In Spanish territories Cagots were subject to the limpieza de sangre statutes (cleanliness of blood). These statutes established the legal discrimination, restriction of rights, and restriction of privileges of

2584-767: A sandbar that stretches from the mouth of the Rio Tinto , near Palos de la Frontera to Almonte , the riverbank that is opposite Sanlúcar de Barrameda . The area is now protected as the Parque Nacional de Doñana . In the first century AD, Pliny the Elder incorrectly identified the city of Carteia as the Tartessos mentioned in Greek sources while Strabo just commented. Carteia is identified as El Rocadillo, near S. Roque, Province of Cádiz, some distance away from

2736-533: A separate social class and were largely assimilated into the general population. Very little of Cagot culture still exists, as most descendants of Cagots have preferred not to be known as such. There are two museums dedicated to the history of the Cagots, one in the neighborhood of Bozate in the town of Arizkun , Spain, the Museo Etnográfico de los Agotes (Ethnographic Museum of the Agotes), opened by

2888-508: A series of corruption scandals broke out involving regional president Yolanda Barcina and other regional government officials that included influence peddling, embezzlement, misappropriation of funds and mismanagement leading to the bankruptcy of Caja Navarra . By November 2012, the PSN—UPN's standing ally in Navarre up to that point—backed down on its support of UPN, but refused to impeach Yolanda Barcina or search new political alliances, leaving

3040-599: A site in the Iberian Peninsula during that period. Calibrated carbon-14 dating carried out by University of Groningen on associated cattle bones as well as dating based on ceramic samples permit a chronology of several centuries through the state of the art of craft and industry since the tenth century BC, as follows: pottery (bowls, plates, craters, vases, amphorae, etc.), melting pots, casting nozzles, weights, finely worked pieces of wood, ship parts, bovid skulls, pendants, fibulae, anklebones, agate, ivory –with

3192-670: A specific language of its people or its consideration as part of the Navarrese heritage. The Statutory Law of Basque of 1986 defined the above areas, creating the Basque-speaking zone , an area north-east of Navarre in which Basque is the co-official language along with Spanish. This law recognizes Spanish and Basque as Navarre's lenguas propias (a Spanish legal term meaning that a language in an autonomous community in Spain has co-official status along with Spanish), according to

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3344-434: A tail. Many Bretons believed that Cagots bled from their navel on Good Friday . The French early psychiatrist Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol wrote in his 1838 works that the Cagots were a subset of " idiot ", and separate from "cretins". By the middle of the 19th century, previous pseudo-medical beliefs and beliefs of them being intellectually inferior had waned and German doctors, by 1849, regarded them as “not without

3496-497: A type identification. This pottery, dated from the tenth to the early eighth centuries BC predates finds from other Phoenician colonies; together with remnants of numerous activities, the Huelva discoveries reveal a substantial industrial and commercial emporion on this site lasting several centuries. Similar finds in other parts of the city make it possible to estimate the protohistoric habitat of Huelva at some 20 hectares, large for

3648-568: A view of Tartessos that made it the Western, and wholly European source of the legend of Atlantis . A more serious review, by W. A. Oldfather , appeared in American Journal of Philology . Both Atlantis and Tartessos were believed to have been advanced societies that collapsed when their cities were lost beneath the waves; supposed further similarities with the legendary society make a connection seem feasible, although virtually nothing

3800-756: Is a mixture of its Basque tradition, the Trans-Pyrenean influx of people and ideas and Mediterranean influences coming from the Ebro . The Ebro valley is amenable to wheat , vegetables , wine , and even olive trees as in Aragon and La Rioja . It was a part of the Roman Empire , inhabited by the Vascones , later controlled on its southern fringes by the Muslim Banu Qasi , whose authority

3952-469: Is also supported by others who investigated the Cagots in the Basque Country, such as Philippe Veyrin  [ fr ] who stated the "ethnic type" and names of Cagots were the same as the Basque within Navarre. Though people who set out to research the Cagots found them to be a diverse class of people in physical appearance, as diverse as the non-Cagot communities around them. One common trend

4104-669: Is an extinct pre- Roman language once spoken in southern Iberia . The oldest known indigenous texts of Iberia, dated from the seventh to sixth centuries BC, are written in Tartessian. The inscriptions are written in a semi- syllabic writing system called the Southwest script ; they were found in the general area in which Tartessos was located and in surrounding areas of influence. Tartessian language texts were found in Southwestern Spain and Southern Portugal (namely in

4256-620: Is assumed that as with other Mediterranean peoples, the religion was polytheistic. It is believed that Tartessians worshiped the goddess Astarte or Potnia and the masculine divinity Baal or Melkart , as a result of the Phoenician acculturation. Sanctuaries inspired by Phoenician architecture have been found in the deposit of Castulo ( Linares, Jaén ) and in the vicinity of Carmona . Several images of Phoenician deities have been found in Cádiz , Huelva , and Sevilla . The Tartessian language

4408-413: Is attributed to a warrior because part of his helmet is preserved. In this region of southern Spain, the Tartessian culture was born around the 9th century B.C. as a result of hybridization between the Phoenician settlers and the local inhabitants. Scholars refer to the Tartessian culture as "a hybrid archaeological culture". Alluvial tin was panned in Tartessian streams from an early date. The spread of

4560-464: Is found in the Tartessian cities of Huelva Province. Cypriot and Phoenician metalworkers produced 15 million tons of pyrometallurgical residues at the vast dumps of Riotinto. Mining and smelting preceded the arrival, from the eighth century BC onward, of Phoenicians and then Greeks, who provided a stimulating wider market and whose influence sparked an "orientalizing" phase in Tartessian material culture ( c.  750–550 BC) before Tartessian culture

4712-490: Is known of Tartessos, not even its precise site. Other Tartessian enthusiasts imagine it as a contemporary of Atlantis, with which it might have traded. In 2011, a team led by Richard Freund claimed to have found strong evidence for the location in Doñana National Park based on underground and underwater surveys and the interpretation of the archaeological site Cancho Roano as "memorial cities" rebuilt in

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4864-512: Is now Gipuzkoa )—and the flatter areas to the south, Calagurris (in what is now La Rioja), which were amenable to large-scale Roman farming —vineyards, olives, and wheat crops. There is no evidence of battles fought or general hostility between Romans and Basques, as they had the same enemies. Neither the Visigoths nor the Franks ever completely subjugated the area. The Vascones (to become

5016-566: Is the lingua navarrorum , as it appears in documents of the Middle Ages, such as a document by the king Sancho the Wise . The kingdom cemented its roots in the predominantly Basque-speaking domain of Pamplona and surrounding areas. In the midst of contemporary scholarly debates on the existence of Navarre and its laws prior to the king's authority, the Navarrese author Garcia de Gongora states as follows in 1626: Two languages are spoken across

5168-536: Is the mother tongue of 81.9% of the population, Basque is 5.7% of the population's mother tongue, and 3.8% of the population has both languages as their mother tongue while 6.1% of the population have another language as their mother tongue . The number of people that can speak Basque has increased in Navarre lately, after a steady historic retreat. In 2011, 13.6% of the population in Navarre considered themselves to be speakers of Basque and another 14.5% considered themselves semi-speakers of Basque. Historically, Basque

5320-670: The Agotes were descendants of French immigrant lepers to the region. Later English commentators supported the idea of an origin among a community of lepers due to the similarities in the treatment of Cagots in churches and the measures taken to allow lepers in England and Scotland to attend churches. In the 1940s to 1950s blood type analysis was performed on the Cagots of Bozate  [ es ] in Navarre. The blood type distribution showed more similarity with those observed in France among

5472-576: The Aralar Range . In the north, climate is affected by the Atlantic Ocean leading an Oceanic west coast climate (Köppen: Cfb). Since the northernmost part of Navarre is less than 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) from the Bay of Biscay , the northern fringes resemble San Sebastián . At central Navarre the summer precipitations start to lower, leading to a Mediterranean climate (Köppen: Csa and Csb) At

5624-704: The Conii , Cempsi , Sefes , and Celtici areas of the Algarve and southern Alentejo ). Since the classicists of the early twentieth century, biblical archaeologists often identify the place-name Tarshish in the Hebrew Bible with Tartessos, although others connect Tarshish to Tarsus in Anatolia or other places as far as India. Tarshish, like Tartessos, is associated with extensive mineral wealth ( Iberian Pyrite Belt ). In 1922, Adolf Schulten gave currency to

5776-456: The Dalits . Few consistent reasons were given as to why Cagots were hated; accusations varied from them being cretins , lepers , heretics , cannibals , sorcerers , werewolves , sexual deviants , to actions they were accused of such as poisoning wells, or for simply being intrinsically evil. They were viewed as untouchables , with Christian Delacampagne  [ fr ] noting how it

5928-569: The Navarrese People's Union (UPN) (a Navarrese party that had a long alliance with the People's Party (PP), main right-wing party in Spain). However, in 2015 Uxue Barkos ( Geroa Bai ) became president with the support of EH Bildu , Podemos and Izquierda-Ezkerra . She is the first Basque nationalist president in Navarre. Basque nationalist parties also represent a sizeable part of

6080-554: The Opus Dei , to found their University of Navarre (1952), ever more influential in Pamplona. The coming of the society of consumption and incipient economic liberalisation saw also the establishment of factories and workshops during the early 1960s (automobile manufacturing and accessories, etc.), especially around the overgrown capital. It was followed by labour and political unrest. Officials and figures with good connections to

6232-483: The Protestant temple of Pau  [ fr ] . Due to association with woodworking crafts, Cagots often worked as the operators of instruments of torture and execution, as well as making the instruments themselves. Such professions may have perpetuated their social ostracisation. Cagot women were often midwives until the 15th century. Due to social exclusion , in France the Cagots were exempt from taxation until

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6384-638: The Pyrenees mountain range that dominates the territory to the plains of the Ebro river valley in the south. The highest point in Navarre is Mesa de los Tres Reyes , with an elevation of 2,428 metres (7,966 feet). Other important mountains are Txamantxoia , Kartxela , the Larra-Belagua Massif , Sierra de Alaiz , Untzueko Harria , Sierra de Leyre , Sierra del Perdón , Montejurra , Ezkaba , Monte Ori , Sierra de Codés , Urbasa , Andia , and

6536-548: The Visigoths defeated by Clovis I at the Battle of Vouillé , and that the name Cagot derives from caas ("dog") and the Old Occitan for Goth gòt around the 6th century . Yet in opposition to this etymology is the fact that the word cagot is first found in this form in 1542 in the works of François Rabelais . Seventeenth century French historian Pierre de Marca , in his Histoire de Béarn , propounds

6688-513: The Way of Saint James . In 1200, Navarre lost the key western Basque districts to Alphonse VIII of Castile , leaving the kingdom landlocked. Navarre then contributed with a small but symbolic force of 200 knights to the decisive Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 against the Almohads . The native line of kings came to an end in 1234; their heirs intermarried with French dynasties. However,

6840-401: The Way of St. James pilgrimage route in the 9th and 10th centuries; this could have brought the guild both power and suspicion. The collapse of their business would have left a scattered, yet cohesive group in the areas where Cagots are known. Robb's guild hypothesis, alongside much of the work in his The Discovery of France , has been heavily criticised for "[failing] to understand most of

6992-517: The energy sector , healthcare services and manufacturing . The gross domestic product (GDP) of the autonomous community was 20.3 billion euros as of 2018, accounting for 1.7% of Spanish economic output. GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was 33,700 euros or 112% of the EU27 average in the same year. The GDP per employee was 109% of the EU average. The unemployment rate stood at 10.2% in 2017 and

7144-825: The necropolis at La Joya, Huelva , archaeological surveys have been integrated with philological and literary surveys and the broader picture of the Iron Age in the Mediterranean basin to provide a more informed view of the supposed Tartessian culture on the ground, concentrated in western Andalusia , Extremadura , and in southern Portugal from the Algarve to the Vinalopó River in Alicante . Significant discoveries were made at Turuñuelo archeological site in Guareña , where excavation began in 2015. The site

7296-458: The priesthood . Either they were altogether forbidden to partake of the sacrament, or the Eucharist was given to them on the end of a wooden spoon, while a holy water stoup was reserved for their exclusive use. They were compelled to wear a distinctive dress to which, in some places, was attached the foot of a goose or duck (whence they were sometimes called Canards ), and latterly to have

7448-427: The 16th century cagoteries , which were often on the far outskirts of the villages. On the scale of Béarn , for example, the distribution of Cagots, often carpenters, was similar to that of other craftsmen, who were numerous mainly in the piedmont. Far from congregating in only a few places, the Cagots were scattered in over 137 villages and towns. Outside the mountains, 35 to 40% of communities had Cagots, especially

7600-629: The 1841 chartered provisions. Except for a small faction (the so-called Alfonsinos ), all parties in Navarre agreed on the need for a new political framework based on home rule within the Laurak Bat , the Basque districts in Spain. Among these, the Carlists stood out , who politically dominated the province, and resented an increased string of rulings and laws passed by Madrid, as well as left leaning influences. Unlike Biscay or Gipuzkoa, Navarre did not develop manufacturing during this period, remaining

7752-599: The 18th century Cagots made up considerable portions of various settlements, such as in Baigorri where Cagots made up 10% of the population. In 1709, the influential politician Juan de Goyeneche  [ es ] planned and constructed the manufacturing town of Nuevo Baztán (after his native Baztan Valley in Navarre) near Madrid. He brought many Cagot settlers to Nuevo Baztán, but after some years, many returned to Navarre, unhappy with their work conditions. In 1723

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7904-459: The 18th century. By the 19th century these restrictions seem to have been lifted, but the trades continued to be practiced by Cagots, along with other trades such as weaving and blacksmithing . Because the main identifying mark of the Cagots was the restriction of their trades to a few small options, their segregation has been compared to the caste system in India , with the Cagots being compared to

8056-668: The 1978 Spanish constitution and the Amejoramiento del Fuero , a Navarrese law establishing the basic institutional make-up of the chartered community of Navarre, Spanish is the official language of Navarre, while the Basque language is also the official language in Basque-Speaking areas. Unlike any other statutes in the Spanish autonomous communities owning a regional language, the Amejoramiento omits citing Basque as

8208-401: The Argelès valley, near Luchon and in the Ariège district. Today they are almost extinct, you have to search hard if you want to see them". Examples of prejudice still occurred into the 19th and 20th century, including a scandal in the village of Lescun where in the 1950s a non-Cagot woman married a Cagot man. There was a distinct Cagot community in Navarre until the early 20th century, with

8360-460: The Basque nationalist EH Bildu and pro-Basque Geroa Bai parties, on the one side, and the institutional pro-Spanish parties, UPN, PP and PSN on the other. Parties on the pro-Basque spectrum demand further sovereignty in internal affairs of Navarre and closer relationship with the districts of the Basque Autonomous Community . In the past, pro-Basque parties were excluded from key political posts and institutions. Another 2013–2014 controversy refers to

8512-435: The Basques) assimilated neighbouring tribes as of the 7th century AD. In the year 778, the Basques defeated a Frankish army at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass . Following the Battle of Roncevaux Pass (824) , the Basque chieftain Iñigo Arista was elected King of Pamplona supported by the muwallad Banu Qasi of Tudela , establishing a Basque kingdom that was later called Navarre. That kingdom reached its zenith during

8664-405: The Bible, in the Assyrian stele of Esarhaddon , and perhaps in the Phoenician inscription of the Nora Stone , but also with the Tartessos of Greek sources –interpreting the Tartessus river as equivalent to the present-day Tinto River and the Ligustine Lake to the joint estuary of the Odiel and Tinto rivers flowing west and east of the Huelva Peninsula. There is very little data but it

8816-407: The Cagots are the descendants of a fallen medieval guild of carpenters. This hypothesis would explain the most salient thing Cagots throughout France and Spain have in common: that is, being restricted in their choice of trade. The red webbed-foot symbol Cagots were sometimes forced to wear might have been the guild's original emblem, according to the hypothesis. There was a brief construction boom on

8968-450: The Cagots to Pope Leo X in 1514 was successful, and he published a papal bull in 1515, instructing that the Cagots be treated "with kindness, in the same way as the other believers." Still, little changed, as most local authorities ignored the bull. The nominal though usually ineffective allies of the Cagots were the government, the educated, and the wealthy. This included Charles V who officially supported tolerance of and improvements to

9120-486: The Cathars gave to themselves, bons crestians . A delegation by Cagots to Pope Leo X in 1514 made this claim, though the Cagots predate the Cathar heresy and the Cathar heresy was not present in Gascony and other regions where Cagots were present. The historian Daniel Hawkins suggests that perhaps this was a strategic move, as in the limpieza de sangre statutes such discrimination and persecution for those convicted of heresy expired after four generations and if this

9272-401: The Foral Law 18/1986 of Basque. This law divides Navarre into three linguistically distinct areas, a Basque-speaking zone , where Basque is the dominant language, a Mixed-speaking zone , where Basque and Spanish are both dominant, and a Non-Basque speaking zone , where Spanish is the dominant language. In the latter, the public entities of Navarre are required to use only Spanish, but in

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9424-406: The French than those observed among the Basque. Pilar Hors uses this as support for the theory that the Cagots in Spain are descendants of French migrants, most likely from leper colonies. Victor de Rochas  [ fr ] wrote that the Cagots were likely descendants of Spanish Roma from the Basque country . In Bordeaux, where they were numerous, they were called ladres . This name has

9576-418: The Guadalquivir. In the second century AD, Appian thought that Karpessos ( Carpia ) was previously known as Tartessos. The discoveries published by Adolf Schulten in 1922 first drew attention to Tartessos and shifted its study from classical philologists and antiquarians to investigations based on archaeology, although attempts at localizing a capital for what was conceived as a complicated culture in

9728-457: The Guadiana River, revealed an important necropolis. Elements specific to Tartessian culture are the Late Bronze Age fully evolved pattern-burnished wares and geometrically banded and patterns "Carambolo" wares, from the ninth to the sixth centuries BC; an "Early Orientalizing" phase with the first eastern Mediterranean imports, beginning circa 750 BC; a "Late Orientalizing" phase with the finest bronze casting and goldsmith work; gray ware turned on

9880-435: The Irish author and diplomat Thomas Colley Grattan , whose 1823 story The Cagot's Hut details the otherness he perceived in the Cagots during his travels in the French Pyrenees, detailing many of the mythical features that became folklore about the Cagots appearance. In July 1841 the German poet Heinrich Heine visited the town of Cauterets and learned of the Cagots and their discrimination by others, subsequently becoming

10032-439: The Kingdom of Navarre. However, Basque underwent a gradual erosion, accelerated following the conquest of the kingdom in the early 16th century due to the homogenizing push of the new Castilian authorities and the neglect of its own elites, among other reasons. By 1778, 121,000 inhabitants out of 227,000 were Basque speakers, 53% of its population, still the largest amount of Basque speakers across all Basque territories . However,

10184-553: The Latin caco-deus , caco meaning "false, bad, deceitful", and deus meaning "god", due to a belief that Cagots were descended from the Alans and followed Arianism . Their name differed by province and the local language : Previously some of these names had been viewed as being similar yet separate groups from the Cagots. The origin of the Cagots is not known for certain, though through history many legends and hypotheses have been recorded providing potential origins and reasons for their ostracisation. The Cagots were not

10336-507: The Middle Ages with a particular form of leprosy or a condition resembling it, such as psoriasis . Thus would arise the confusion between Christians and Cretins, and explain the similar restrictions placed on lepers and Cagots. Guy de Chauliac wrote in the 14th century, and Ambroise Paré wrote in 1561 of the Cagots being lepers with "beautiful faces" and skin with no signs of leprosy, describing them as "white lepers" (people afflicted with "white leprosy"). Later dermatologists believe that Paré

10488-462: The Modification of Fueros (later called the "Compromise Act", Ley Paccionada ) definitely made the kingdom into a province after a compromise was reached by the Spanish government with officials of the Provincial Council of Navarre. The relocation of customs from the Ebro river to the Pyrenees in 1841 prompted the collapse of Navarre's customary cross-Pyrenean trade and the rise of smuggling. Amid instability in Spain, Carlists took over in Navarre and

10640-413: The Navarrese kept most of their strong laws and institutions . The death of Queen Blanche I (1441) inaugurated a civil war period between the Beaumont and Agramont confederacies with the intervention of the Castilian-Aragonese House of Trastámara in Navarre's internal affairs. In 1512, Navarre was invaded by Ferdinand the Catholic 's troops, with Queen Catherine and King John III withdrawing to

10792-405: The Navarrese parliament passed a law splitting teachers aspiring to work in the state-run education network into two different professional categories, one for those qualified in Basque and Spanish , and another for Spanish monolinguals, so thwarting with the vote of Izquierda-Ezkerra (integrated in the regional government) the new progressive government's plan to have just one; the latter echoes

10944-485: The Navarrese regional government went on to join Adolfo Suárez 's UCD , later splitting into the party UPN led by Jesús Aizpún Tuero (1979), refusing to join a democratic constitutional process on the grounds that Navarre's charters (or fueros ) remained in place. They also refused to join the Basque process to become an autonomous community, where recently legalised Basque nationalist and leftist parties held

11096-531: The Near East starting during the first millennium BC. Herodotus , for example, describes it as beyond the Pillars of Hercules . Roman authors tend to echo the earlier Greek sources, but from around the end of the millennium there are indications that the name Tartessos had fallen out of use and the city may have been lost to flooding, although several authors attempt to identify it with cities of other names in

11248-552: The Parlement of Bordeaux instituted a fine of 500 French livres for anyone insulting any individual as "alleged descendants of the Giezy race, and treating them as agots, cagots, gahets or ladres"; ordering that they will be admitted to general and particular assemblies, to municipal offices and honors of the church, they may even be placed in the galleries and other places of the said church where they will be treated and recognized as

11400-462: The Parliament of Navarre, although both Geroa Bai and EH Bildu increased their vote share. Following the election results, PSN's María Chivite was elected president with the support provided by progressive forces, handing over Pamplona's council to Navarra Suma and explicitly excluding EH Bildu from any talks or alliances, but relying on its abstention for her inauguration. In December 2017,

11552-590: The Pyrene Mountain (generally accepted by modern scholars as the Pyrenees ) and flows out to sea outside the Pillars of Hercules, the modern Strait of Gibraltar . No such river traverses the Iberian Peninsula . According to the fourth century BC Greek geographer and explorer Pytheas , quoted by Strabo in the first century AD, the ancestral homeland of the Turduli was located north of Turdetania ,

11704-483: The Spanish government came to a head as of 1794, when Spanish premier Manuel Godoy attempted to suppress Navarrese and Basque self-government altogether, with the end of the First Carlist War (1839 – 1841) definitely bringing the kingdom and its home rule ( fueros ) to an end. After the 1839 Convention of Bergara , a reduced version of home rule ( fueros ) was passed in 1839. However, the 1841 Act for

11856-500: The Spanish home office secretary Jorge Fernández Díaz stepped in warning leading members of PSN that "Navarre is strategic for Spain", and asserting that any other political alliance means "supporting ETA". The Justice secretary in Madrid Alberto Ruiz Gallardón in turn stated that "the worst political error is not corruption" but getting along with Bildu (a Basque pro-independence coalition). In May 2015,

12008-594: The Tartessian material culture within the broader Mediterranean horizon of an " Orientalizing period " recognizable in the Aegean and Etruria . J. M. Luzón was the first to identify Tartessos with modern Huelva , based on discoveries made in the preceding decades. Since the discovery in September 1958 of the rich gold treasure of El Carambolo in Camas, three kilometres west of Seville , and of hundreds of artefacts in

12160-496: The Tartessian sites. A later generation has been more concerned with the process through which local institutions evolved. The emergence of new archaeological finds in the city of Huelva is prompting the revision of these traditional views. Just in two adjacent lots adding up to 2,150 sq. m. between Las Monjas Square and Mendez Nuñez Street , some 90,000 ceramic fragments of indigenous, Phoenician, and Greek imported wares were exhumed, out of which 8,009 allowed scope for

12312-566: The Way of Saint James rendered Occitan the status language of the kingdom up to early 14th century. Navarro-Aragonese became the written language in court and royal administration by 1329, when it reached official status. However, from the 15th century onwards the language grew closer to Castilian ( Spanish ) and eventually merged with it. Other languages which at some point held a status or were spoken in certain communities and periods are Erromintxela , French , Hebrew , and Arabic . According to

12464-409: The ability to become useful members of society.” Though various French and British doctors were continuing to label the Cagots as a race inherently afflicted with congenital disabilities to the end of the 19th century. Daniel Tuke wrote in 1880 after visiting communities where Cagots lived, noted how local people would not subject "cretins" born to non-Cagots to living with Cagots. The Cagots did have

12616-472: The alleged ideological profiling of public school Basque language teachers, billed as " ETA supporting teachers". Since the establishment of Navarre's present status (the Amejoramiento , the 'Betterment') in 1982, the successive regional governments ruled by UPN and PSN have been shaken by frequent political instability and corruption scandals , with UPN's Miguel Sanz's term being the most stable and longest, extending from 2001 to 2011. Between 2012 and 2014,

12768-404: The ancient Navarrese liberties . The bleak post-war years were shaken by shortage, famine, and smuggling, with the economy relying on agriculture (wheat, vineyards, olive, barley), and a negative migration balance. The victors came to cluster around two main factions, Carlists and Falangists , while the totalitarian ultra-Catholic environment provided fertile grounds for another religious group,

12920-566: The area. The Tartessians were rich in metals. In the fourth century BC the historian Ephorus describes "a very prosperous market called Tartessos, with much tin carried by river, as well as gold and copper from Celtic lands". Trade in tin was very lucrative in the Bronze Age , since it is an essential component of bronze and is comparatively rare. Herodotus refers to a king of Tartessos, Arganthonios , presumably named for his wealth in silver. Herodotus also says that Arganthonios welcomed

13072-435: The arrangement adopted for Navarre (Chartered Community of Navarre, 1982). The reform was not ratified by referendum, as demanded by Basque nationalist and minority leftist forces. After the end of Franco's dictatorship , Navarre became one of the 17 Autonomous Communities in Spain. The community ceremonies, education, and social services, together with housing, urban development, and environment protection policies are under

13224-426: The bodies moved to non-Cagot cemeteries. Commonly Cagots were not given a standard last name in registries and records but were only listed by their first name, followed by the mention " crestians " or " cagot ", such as on their baptismal certificate, They were allowed to enter a church only by a special door and, during the service, a rail separated them from the other worshippers. They were forbidden from joining

13376-470: The bronze was Tartessian. The people from Tartessos became important trading partners of the Phoenicians, whose presence in Iberia dates from the eighth century BC and who nearby built a harbor of their own, Gadir ( ‹See Tfd› Greek : Γάδειρα , Latin : Gades , present-day Cádiz ). Several early sources, such as Aristotle , refer to Tartessos as a river. Aristotle claims that it rises from

13528-519: The carpenters who made the cross that Jesus was crucified on, or being descendants of the bricklayers who built Solomon's Temple after being expelled from ancient Israel by God due to poor craftsmanship. Similarly a more detailed legend places the origins of the Cagots in Spain as being descendants of a Pyrenean master carver named Jacques, who traveled to ancient Israel via Tartessos , to cast Boaz and Jachin for Solomon's Temple. While in Israel he

13680-753: The coalition government of Navarre, as well as EH Bildu, but was saluted by the PSN and Navarra Suma. Navarre consists of 272 municipalities and has a total population of 601,874 (2006), of whom approximately one-third live in the capital, Pamplona (195,769 pop.), and one-half in the capital's metropolitan area (315,988 pop.). There are no other large municipalities in the region. The next largest are Tudela (32,802), Barañain (22,401), Burlada/Burlata (18,388), Estella-Lizarra (13,892), Zizur Mayor (13,197), Tafalla (11,040), Villava/Atarrabia (10,295), and Ansoáin/Antsoain (9,952). Despite its relatively small size, Navarre features stark contrasts in geography, from

13832-516: The death of his wife Queen Isabella, he extended the Castilian expulsion and forcible integration orders applicable to conversos and mudejars of 1492 to the former kingdom. Therefore, Tudela in particular could no longer serve as a refuge after the Inquisitors were allowed. Navarre is one of the wealthiest regions in Spain per capita, with a diversified economy primarily focused on

13984-526: The descendants of Muslims, Jews, Romani , and Cagots. Cagots were prohibited from selling food or wine, touching food in the market, working with livestock, or entering mills. The Cagots were often restricted to craft trades including those of carpenter, masons, woodcutters, wood carvers, coopers, butcher, and rope-maker. They were also often employed as musicians in Navarre. Cagots who were involved in masonry and carpentry were often contracted to construct major public buildings, such as churches, an example being

14136-492: The descendants of medieval lepers, while others propose they were related to the Cathars or even a fallen guild of carpenters. Some suggest descent from a variety of other marginalized racial or religious groups. Despite the varied and often mythical explanations for their origins, the only consistent aspect of the Cagots was their societal exclusion and the lack of any distinct physical or cultural traits differentiating them from

14288-400: The elections for Navarre Parliament left a better result for pro-Basque parties, which managed to establish an alliance, Uxue Barkos from Geroa Bai being elected president of Navarre for the period 2015 – 2019. June 2019 elections, however, turned the tide, when rightist forces reunited in the platform Navarra Suma , made up of UPN, PP and Ciudadanos , and garnered 20 MPs, 40% of the seats in

14440-463: The fascist salute and even involved in murderous tasks. The killing took a death toll of at least 2,857, plus a further 305 dying in prisons (ill-treatment, malnutrition). The dead were buried in mass graves or discarded into chasms abounding on the central hilly areas (Urbasa, etc.). Basque nationalists were also chased to a lesser extent, e.g. Fortunato Aguirre, a Basque nationalist and mayor of Estella (and co-founder of Osasuna Football Club),

14592-404: The fast potter's wheel , local imitations of imported Phoenician red-slip wares. Characteristic Tartessian bronzes include pear-shaped jugs, often associated in burials, with shallow dish-shaped braziers having loop handles, incense-burners with floral motifs, fibulas , both elbowed and double-spring types, and belt buckles. No pre-colonial necropolis sites have been identified. The change from

14744-500: The feats of the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne , describing his intrusion to the Ebro river. Other Royal Frankish Annals feature nabarros . There are two proposed etymologies for the name. The linguist Joan Coromines considers naba to be linguistically part of a wider Vasconic or Aquitanian language substrate, rather than Basque per se . The official name in Basque is Nafarroa , but

14896-574: The fifth century BC. Tartessic occupation sites of the Late Bronze Age that were not particularly complex: "a domestic mode of production seems to have predominated" is one mainstream assessment. An earlier generation of archaeologists and historians took a normative approach to the primitive Tartessian adoption of Punic styles and techniques, as of a less-developed culture adopting better, more highly evolved cultural traits, and finding Eastern parallels for Early Iron Age material culture in

15048-584: The first Greeks to reach Iberia, which was a ship carrying the Phocaeans from Asia Minor. Pausanias wrote that Myron, the tyrant of Sicyon , built a treasury, which was called the treasury of the Sicyonians, to commemorate a victory in the chariot race at the Olympic games . In the treasury, he made two chambers with two different styles, one Doric and one Ionic , with bronze. The Eleans said that

15200-484: The form Nafarroa Garaia "Upper Navarre" is also often seen, to distinguish the province from neighboring Lower Navarre . Before and during the Roman Empire , the Vascones populated the southern slopes of the Pyrenees , including the area which would ultimately become Navarre. In the mountainous north, the Vascones escaped large-scale Roman settlement, except for some coastal areas—for example Oiasso (in what

15352-462: The general population. The discriminatory treatment they faced included social segregation and restrictions on marriage and occupation. Despite laws and edicts from higher levels of government and religious authorities, this discrimination persisted into the 20th century. The origins of both the term Cagots (and Agotes , Capots , Caqueux , etc.) and the Cagots themselves are uncertain. It has been suggested that they were descendants of

15504-485: The history and persecution of the Cagots in Rachel Kushner ’s novel Creation Lake. Navarre Navarre is in the transition zone between the green Cantabrian Coast and semi-arid interior areas and thus its landscapes vary widely across the region. Being in a transition zone also produces a highly variable climate, with summers that are a mix of cooler spells and heat waves, and winters that are mild for

15656-489: The image of Atlantis. Spanish scientists have dismissed Freund's claims claiming that he was sensationalising their work. The anthropologist Juan Villarías-Robles, who works with the Spanish National Research Council , said "Richard Freund was a newcomer to our project and appeared to be involved in his own very controversial issue concerning King Solomon's search for ivory and gold in Tartessos,

15808-581: The kingdom, Basque and Romance , but most properly the Cantabric [language] Basque, the original and most ancient, brought along by its creator, the patriarch Tubal , devoid of mingling with others; it has always been preserved there, except in the Ribera and the bordering areas of Castile and Aragon, where Romance is spoken. José Moret , chronicler of the kingdom, called Navarre and its bordering provinces "the lands of Basque", claiming also that Tubal founded

15960-534: The kings of Europe provide critiques of and insult their former rulers, where they say the Spanish king has "stupidity, cagotism and despotism [...] imprinted on his royal face". Multiple references to Cagots have appeared in the poems of the 19th century French poet Édouard Pailleron . Multiple travellers to the Pyrenees upon learning about and seeing the Cagots were inspired to write of their conditions both in fictional and non-fictional works. Such travellers included

16112-545: The largest ones, excluding very small villages. The buildings making up the cagoteries are still present in many villages. Toponymy and topography indicate that the places where the cagots were found have constant characteristics; these are gaps, generally across rivers or outside town walls , called " crestian " (and derivatives) or " place " (Laplace names are frequent) next to water points, places allocated to live and above all to practice their trades. Toponymy also provides evidence of areas where Cagots had lived in

16264-525: The latitude. Navarre is one of the historic Basque provinces : its Basque features are conspicuous in the north, but virtually absent on the southern fringes. The best-known event in Navarre is the annual festival of San Fermín held in Pamplona in July. The first documented use of a name resembling Navarra , Nafarroa , or Naparroa is a reference to navarros , in Eginhard 's early-9th-century chronicle of

16416-509: The lives of Cagots. It has been suggested that the odd patchwork of areas which recognized Cagots has more to do with which local governments tolerated the prejudice, and which allowed Cagots to be a normal part of society. In a study in 1683, doctors examined the Cagots and found them no different from normal citizens. Notably, they did not actually suffer from leprosy or any other disease that could clarify their exclusion from society. The parlements of Pau, Toulouse and Bordeaux were informed of

16568-525: The mixed area the use of Basque is also confined to certain position. The area of the municipalities belonging to the Basque-speaking and Mixed Basque and Spanish-speaking zones are the following: Tartessos Tartessos ( Spanish : Tartesos ) is, as defined by archaeological discoveries, a historical civilization settled in the southern Iberian Peninsula characterized by its mixture of local Paleohispanic and Phoenician traits. It had

16720-451: The most populous Autonomous Community in Spain with a population of 647,554 inhabitants, which at the time was a population density of 62.32 inhabitants/km . The data of the population pyramid of 2010 can be summarized as follows: Presently, Spanish is predominantly spoken in most of the autonomous community, except for north-eastern areas, where Basque continues to be the prevailing language. According to official statistics, Spanish

16872-501: The nature of a centrally controlled kingdom ancestral to Spain were inconclusively debated. Subsequent discoveries were widely reported: in September 1923 archaeologists discovered a Phoenician necropolis in which human remains were unearthed and stones found with illegible characters. It may have been colonized by the Phoenicians for trade because of its richness in metals. A later generation turned instead to identifying and localizing "orientalizing" (eastern Mediterranean) features of

17024-419: The non-Cagot populace persisted, though the practice began to decline. Also, during the revolution, Cagots stormed record offices and burned birth certificates in an attempt to conceal their heritage. These measures did not prove effective, as the local populace still remembered. Rhyming songs kept the names of Cagot families known. Kurt Tucholsky wrote in his book on the Pyrenees in 1927: "There were many in

17176-549: The north of the Pyrenees , and establishing a Kingdom of Navarre- Béarn , led by Queen Joan III as of 1555. To the south of the Pyrenees, Navarre was annexed to the Crown of Castile in 1515, but kept a separate ambiguous status, and a shaky balance up to 1610— King Henry III was ready to march over Spanish Navarre. A Chartered Government was established (the Diputación ), and the kingdom managed to keep home rule. Tensions with

17328-526: The north. Gascons and Occitans from beyond the Pyrenees (called Franks ) received self-government and other privileges to foster settlement in Navarrese towns, and they brought their crafts, culture and Romance languages . Jews and Muslims were persecuted both north and south of Navarre, expelled for the most part during the late 15th century to the early 16th century. The kingdom struggled to maintain its separate identity in 14th and 15th centuries, and after King Ferdinand V forcibly conquered Navarre after

17480-485: The number of speakers dropped sharply in the 19th century. In 1936, Basque speakers accounted for a 17% of the total Navarrese population. Other languages have been spoken, but have disappeared, such as Navarro-Aragonese , a Romance language that was spoken in the Middle Ages around the central part of the Ebro basin. Starting in the late 11th century, the influx of pilgrims and colonizers from Toulouse and surrounding areas ( Francs ) who settled in separate boroughs along

17632-603: The only workshop of the period so far proven in the west-, gold, silver, etc. The existence of foreign produce and materials together with local ones suggests that the old Huelva harbor was a major hub for the reception, manufacturing, and shipping of diverse products of different and distant origin. The analysis of written sources and the products exhumed, including inscriptions and thousands of Greek ceramics , some of which are works of excellent quality by known potters and painters, has led some scholars to suggest that this habitat can be identified not only with Tarshish mentioned in

17784-698: The other inhabitants of the places, without any distinction; as also that their children will be received in the schools and colleges of the cities, towns and villages, and will be admitted in all the Christian instructions indiscriminately. During the French Revolution substantive steps were taken to end discrimination toward Cagots. Revolutionary authorities claimed that Cagots were no different from other citizens, and de jure discrimination generally came to an end. And while their treatment did improve compared to previous centuries, local prejudice from

17936-628: The overall guidelines established by the Spanish government but may have some minor differences. The first 3 presidents of the community belonged to the extinct Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD) party. After 1984 the government was ruled by either the Socialist Party of Navarre (PSN – PSOE, one of the federative components of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party , main centre-left wing party in Spain) or

18088-664: The past millennia. One of the earliest examples is the legend of the battle of 1373 that led to The Tribute of the Three Cows , the people of the French Valley of Barétous  [ fr ] are said to have been led by a Cagot with four ears. References to Cagots occur semi-regularly in French literary works such as in the 1793 French play Le jugement dernier des rois , by Sylvain Maréchal . The liberated subjects of

18240-607: The past. Various Street names are still in use such as Rue des cagots in the municipalities of Montgaillard and Lourdes , Impasse des cagots in Laurède , Place des cagots in Roquefort , Place des capots in Saint-Girons , and Rue des Capots in the municipalities of Mézin , Sos , Vic-Fezensac , Aire-sur-l'Adour , Eauze , and Gondrin . In Aubiet , there is a locality called " les Mèstres ". It

18392-465: The region had what was then Spain's largest photovoltaic power plant at Montes de Cierzo de Tudela (1.2 MWp capacity) plus several hundred smaller photovoltaic installations. Developments since 2004 have included further photovoltaic plants at Larrión (0.25 MWp) and another at Castejón (2.44 MWp), also once the largest in Spain. In 2018, the Foral Community of Navarra ranked 15th as

18544-519: The region where the kingdom of Tartessos was located in the Baetis River valley (the present-day Guadalquivir valley) in southern Spain. Pausanias , writing in the second century AD, identified the river and gave details of the location of the city: They say that Tartessus is a river in the land of the Iberians, running down into the sea by two mouths and that between these two mouths lies

18696-458: The reign of Sancho III , comprising most of the Christian realms to the south of the Pyrenees, and even a short overlordship of Gascony (in the early 11th century). When Sancho III died in 1035, the kingdom was divided between his sons. It never fully recovered its political power, while its commercial importance increased as traders and pilgrims ( the Francs ) poured into the kingdom via

18848-593: The responsibility of Navarre's political institutions. As in the rest of the communities, Navarre has a Parliament elected every four years, and the majority in this Parliament determines the president of the Community, who is in charge of Navarre's government. Unlike most other autonomous communities of Spain (but like the Basque Autonomous Community ), Navarre has almost full responsibility for collecting and administering taxes which must follow

19000-677: The rest of the Basque provinces . An actual Basque state was established during the Third Carlist War with Estella as its capital (1872 – 1876), but King Alfonso XII 's restoration in the throne of Spain and a counter-attack prompted the Carlist defeat. The end of the Third Carlist War saw a renewed wave of Spanish centralisation directly affecting Navarre. In 1893 – 1894 the Gamazada popular uprising took place centred in Pamplona against Madrid's governmental decisions breaching

19152-557: The reverse – that the word signifies "hunters of the Goths", and that the Cagots were descendants of the Saracens and Moors of Al-Andalus (or even Jews ) after their defeat by Charles Martel , although this proposal was comprehensively refuted by the Prior of Livorno , Abbot Filippo Venuti  [ it ] as early as 1754. Antoine Court de Gébelin derives the term cagot from

19304-403: The same discriminatory practices, including in religious rites and rituals. Cagots were expected to slip into churches quietly and congregate in the worst seats. They had their own holy water fonts set aside for Cagots, and touching the normal font was strictly forbidden. These restrictions were taken seriously; with one story collected by Elizabeth Gaskell explaining the origin of the skeleton of

19456-685: The same form as the Old French word ladre , meaning leper (ultimately derived from Latin Lazarus ). It also has the same form as the Gascon word for thief (ultimately derived from Latin latrō , and cognate to the Catalan lladres and the Spanish ladrón meaning robber or looter), which is similar in meaning to the older, probably Celtic -origin Latin term bagaudae (or bagad),

19608-578: The same religion as the non-Cagots who lived around them, they were subject to variety of discriminatory practices in religious rites and buildings, this included being forced to use a side entrance to churches, often an intentionally low one to force Cagots to bow and remind them of their subservient status. This practice, done for cultural rather than religious reasons, did not change even between Catholic and Huguenot areas, as shown by historian Raymond A. Mentzer, who records how even when Cagots converted from Catholicism to Calvinism they were still subject to

19760-566: The sculptor and Cagot, Xabier Santxotena  [ eu ] in 2003, and a museum in the Château des Nestes in Arreau , France. In 2021 and 2022 anti-vaccination and anti-vaccine passport protestors in France started wearing the red goose's foot symbol that Cagots were forced to wear, and handed out cards explaining the discrimination against the Cagots. References to Cagots as well as Cagots as characters have appeared in works throughout

19912-676: The secondary works in his own bibliography" and being a "recycling of nineteenth-century myths". For similar reasons due to their restricted trades, Delacampagne suggests a possible origin as a culturally distinct community of woodsmen who were Christianised relatively late . The cagots were present in France in Gascony to the Basque Country , but also in the north of Spain (in Aragon , south and north Navarre , and Asturias ). Cagots were typically required to live in separate quarters, these hamlets were called crestianies then from

20064-696: The situation, and money was allocated to improve the situation of the Cagots, but the populace and local authorities resisted. Through many of the centuries Cagots in France and Spain came under the protection and jurisdiction of the church. In 1673, the Ursúa lords of the municipality of Baztán advocated the recognition of the local Cagots as natural residents of the Baztán. Also in the 17th century Jean-Baptiste Colbert officially freed Cagots in France from their servitude to parish churches and from restrictions placed upon them, though in practicality nothing changed. By

20216-633: The small northern village called Arizkun in Basque (or Arizcun in Spanish) being the last haven of this segregation, where the community was contained within the neighbourhood of Bozate. Between 1915 and 1920 the Ursúa noble family sold the land that Cagots had worked for the Ursúa for centuries in the area of Baztan to the Cagot families. Family names in Spain still associated with having Cagot ancestors include: Bidegain, Errotaberea, Zaldua, Maistruarena, Amorena, and Santxotena . The Cagots no longer form

20368-589: The southernmost part of Navarre the climate is cool semi-arid (Köppen: Bsk). This is also at a comparatively low elevation compared to most of the north, further pontentiating the hot summers in comparison to Pamplona and even more so the northern hilly and mountainous region. The sole official weather station of Navarre is located in Pamplona in its north-western corner and has summer highs of 28 °C (82 °F) and lows of 14 °C (57 °F), while winter highs are 9 °C (48 °F) and lows 1 °C (34 °F) with moderate precipitation year-round. Navarre

20520-570: The term leprosus , and so in Béarn became synonymous with the word leper . Thus, another theory is that the Cagots were early converts to Christianity , and that the hatred of their pagan neighbors continued after they also converted, merely for different reasons. Another possible explanation of their name Chretiens or Christianos is to be found in the fact that in medieval times all lepers were known as pauperes Christi , and that, whether Visigoths or not, these Cagots were affected in

20672-574: The topic of his poem Canto XV in Atta Troll . After travelling in southern France in 1853, Elizabeth Gaskell published her non-fiction work An Accursed Race , detailing the contemporary condition of the Cagots. More recently, the Basque director Iñaki Elizalde  [ eu ] released a Spanish-language film titled Baztan in 2012. The film deals with a young man fighting against the discrimination he and his family have suffered for centuries due to being Cagots. There are several references to

20824-570: The vote (around 31% in the 2015 elections ), and a majority in most of the northern areas. Basque nationalist parties have as a key point in their agendas to merge Navarre into the Basque Autonomous Community by referendum (as predicted in the Spanish constitution). All Spain-based parties, as well as UPN and PSN, oppose this move. Politics in Navarre have been marked by fierce rivalry between two blocs representing different national identities that are part of Navarre society:

20976-472: The way to the Spanish Nationalist uprising in Pamplona (18 July 1936). The triumphant military revolt was followed by a terror campaign in the rearguard against blacklisted individuals considered to be progressive ("reds"), mildly republican, or just inconvenient. The purge especially affected southern Navarre along the Ebro banks, and counted on the active complicity of the clergy, who adopted

21128-596: The well-documented settlement in the Doñana area established in the first millennium BC" and described his claims as 'fanciful'. Simcha Jacobovici , involved in the production of a documentary on Freund's work for the National Geographic Channel , stated that the biblical Tarshish (which he believes is the same as Tartessos) was Atlantis, and that "Atlantis was hiding in the Tanach ", although this

21280-435: The work of François Rabelais in the 16th century, the term cagot was used as a synonym for people viewed as deceitful and hypocritical. In contemporary language the term cagot has been further separated from it being the name of a distinct caste of people to being a pejorative term for any person who is "lazy" or "shameful". Similar transformations have occurred with the Spanish equivalent name agote . An appeal by

21432-415: Was believed that they could cause children to fall ill by touching them or even just looking at them, being considered so pestilential that it was a crime for them to walk common roads barefooted or to drink from the same cup as non-Cagots. It was also a common belief that the Cagots gave off a foul smell. Joaquim de Santa Rosa de Viterbo  [ pt ] recorded that many believed Cagots were born with

21584-600: Was declared bien de interés cultural (National heritage site) in May 2022. Two ornate stone busts, featuring details of jewelry and hairstyles which are thought to be the first facial representations of the Tartessian goddesses were discovered in 2023. These sculptures are somewhat similar to the Lady of Elche sculpture, which was dated between the 5th and 4th centuries BC, but are considerably earlier. Fragments of at least three other busts have also been recovered. One of them

21736-481: Was describing leucoderma . Early edicts apparently refer to lepers and Cagots as different categories of undesirables, With this distinction being explicit by 1593. The Parlement of Bordeaux and the Estates of Lower Navarre repeated customary prohibitions against them, with Bordeaux adding that when they were also lepers, if there still are any, they must carry clicquettes (rattles). One belief in Navarre were that

21888-475: Was distracted during the casting of Jachin by a woman, and due to the imperfection this caused in the column his descendants were cursed to suffer leprosy. Another theory is that the Cagots were descendants of the Cathars , who had been persecuted for heresy in the Albigensian Crusade . With some comparisons including the use the term crestians to refer to Cagots, which evokes the name that

22040-648: Was executed in September 1936. Humiliation and silence ensued for the survivors. Pamplona became the rebel launching point against the Republic during the War in the North . As a reward for its support in the Spanish Civil War (Navarre sided for the most part with the military uprising), Franco allowed Navarre, as it happened with Álava , to maintain during his dictatorship a number of prerogatives reminiscent of

22192-771: Was in this hamlet, that the cagots ( Mèstres ) of Aubiet lived, on the left bank of the Arrats , separated from the village by the river. In this last example, the discovery of the name of the place allowed teachers to discover the local history of the Cagots and to start educational work. Until the beginning of the 20th century, several districts of Cagots still bore the name of Charpentier ("Carpenter"). Cagots were shunned and hated; while restrictions varied by time and place, with many discriminatory actions being codified into law in France in 1460, they were typically required to live in separate quarters. Cagots were excluded from various political and social rights. While Cagots followed

22344-399: Was spoken in the region and their family names were not peculiar to the cagots ... The only real difference was that, after eight centuries of persecution, they tended to be more skillful and resourceful than the surrounding populations, and more likely to emigrate to America. They were feared because they were persecuted and might therefore seek revenge. A modern hypothesis of interest is that

22496-566: Was superseded by the Classic Iberian culture . "Tartessic" artefacts linked with the Tartessos culture have been found, and many archaeologists now associate the "lost" city with Huelva . In excavations on spatially restricted sites in the center of modern Huelva, sherds of elite painted Greek ceramics of the first half of the sixth century BC have been recovered. Huelva contains the largest accumulation of imported elite goods and must have been an important Tartessian center. Medellín , on

22648-526: Was taken over by the taifa kingdom of Tudela in the 11th century. During the Reconquista , Navarre gained little ground at the expense of the Muslims, since its southern boundary had already been established by the time of the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212. Starting in the 11th century, the Way of Saint James grew in importance. It brought pilgrims, traders and Christian soldiers from

22800-539: Was the cause of their marginalisation, it also gave grounds for their emancipation. Others have suggested an origin as Arian Christians. One of the earliest recorded mentions of Cagotes is in the charters of Navarre, developed around 1070. Another early mention of the Cagots is from 1288, when they appear to have been called Chretiens or Christianos . Other terms seen in use prior to the 16th century include Crestias , Chrestia , Crestiaa and Christianus , which in medieval texts became inseparable from

22952-399: Was the lowest in the country. Navarre leads Europe in its use of renewable energy technology and was planning to reach 100% renewable electricity generation by 2010. By 2004, 61% of the region's electricity was generated by renewable sources consisting of 43.6% from 28 wind farms , 12% from over 100 small-scale water turbines , and 5.3% from 2 biomass and 2 biogas plants. In addition,

23104-441: Was to claim that Cagots had no ears or no earlobes , or that one ear was longer than the other, with other supposed identifiers including webbed hands and/or feet, or the presence of goitres . Graham Robb finds most of the above theories unlikely: Nearly all the old and modern theories are unsatisfactory ... the real "mystery of the cagots" was the fact that they had no distinguishing features at all. They spoke whatever dialect

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