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Txanton Aboitiz - Singles
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PAULINO TXANTON ABOITIZ – 150th
ANNIVERSARY (1871-2021) JOURNEY FROM SPAIN TO PHILIPPINES
La Familia Aboitiz – Our Roots
TXANTON TORRE – ISPASTER – VISCAYA
– EUZKADI
2016
by
Endika Aboitiz)
We belong to a family and firm that has been in
the Philippines for close to 200 years and approaching a market
value of US$10 billion, respectively, so I thought it might be
healthy to ground ourselves and take a look at our roots.
An Aboitiz and a Moraza both married two
Yrastorza sisters so we are really the Yrastorza family and not so
much the Aboitiz-Moraza family. Our Yrastorza great-great
grandparents arrived on a galleon sometime in 1820 so I am rounding
off to a presence in Las Islas Filipinas then to 200 years. Our
grandfather, Paulino Aboitiz, married the boss’s daughter, so to
speak, as he started his life here working for Gregorio Yrastorza
from what I know. I am guessing that both Aboitiz and Moraza seed
capital must have come from our Yrastorza great-great grandparents.
All three of these families were Basque. We, the
Basques, are the original Europeans. At least 12,000 years ago our
“Neanderthal” ancestors took a turn from somewhere and ended up in
the Pyrenees around northern Spain and southwest France. That is
about 10,000 years before Christ was born. That is why a third of
all Basques have Rh negative blood. They developed a language,
Esukerra, which no one has been able to trace. They were fishermen
and explorers that ventured north up to Greenland and across to what
it is today, the Saint Lawrence River in Canada, i.e. North America
way before Colon. They must have met the Vikings there as both were
searching for the fish that changed the world: bacalao (cod).
They were mariners because they were fishermen
and so, when the Portuguese and the Castilians need navigators to
find a route to the East, they engaged the Basques, e.g. Juan
Sebastian Elcano who was from Guetaria. The Castilians, under the
patronage of the very Catholic Queen Isabella de Castilla, would
have gone north on the Guadalquivir instead of down towards Sanlúcar
de Barrameda and out towards Cuba. Colon was Genovese. After many
years, he convinced Queen Isabella to finance his trip to enrich and
save souls as they filled their holds with gold and silver from
Latin America.
They never had a king. They had a council of
elders that met around a tree in a town called Guernica. They were
also fiercely independent—the Spanish kings allied with them but
never took them over.
After de Lesseps opened
the Suez Canal, our great grandfather Paulino Aboitiz, educated as a
mariner, came to Las Islas Filipinas looking for both fortune and
“Ang Dalagang Pilipina”, as the beautiful song expresses.
He was born in a brick farmhouse in Ispaster.
Aside from his parents, three brothers and a sister lived there on
the second floor, with their animals below.
He was educated to be a mariner in this small,
quaint fishing town.
These are our relatives.
The lady in the middle (fourth from left) is a cousin of my father’s
generation. They used to call her La Madre. I met her and her
husband Zamora in the late 60s. This photo was taken in the mid-70s.
He had passed away. He was a farmer. We surmise that that only
daughter (Paulino’s sister) inherited the farm as the brothers died
or left. But they are all Aboitizes. The two on the left are our
cousins. The
young lady is Isabel. I have seen her many times since then. She is
now a little older and with children. They had trunks of photos that
our great grandfather had been sending them from Filipinas.
THEY WERE SIMPLE, SALT-OF-THE-EARTH PEASANTS!
SO ARE WE!
EDUCATED, TRAVELLED, BUT PEASANTS SO WE SHOULD
NEVER FORGET WHERE WE CAME FROM.
What kept Basque families together?
The family that drinks together stays together!
They worked hard and were united.
Thirty kilometers or so away from the town of
Ispaster is the town of Azpetzia. St. Ignacius of Loyola was born
there. He was the founder of the Jesuits that always gave the other
orders of the Catholic Church a little competition. They believed in
education. At one point in time they controlled most of the better
universities in most of Europe.
THOSE ARE OUR ROOTS!
LET’S NOT LET OUR COMMERCIAL SUCCESS LEAD US TO
THINK ANY DIFFERENTLY.
WE ARE PEASANTS!
https://aboitizeyesarchive.aboitiz.com/notes-endika-aboitiz-roots/