Basajaun: Spain’s Bigfoot

Inexplicata has written elsewhere about the simiots of Spain’s Catalunya and Upper Aragon – creatures that may well find their U.S. counterparts in our very own Bigfoot.

Today, Raul Nuñez of the IIEE sends along an interesting article on another supersized inhabitant of the Pyrenees — the towering Basajaun, a regular feature of Basque folklore. The article, written by Roberto Aretxaga and J.M. Satrústegui, first appeared in issue 134 of the defunct Karma-7 Magazine:

There exist creatures of considerable height, completely covered in hair, that wander the Pyrenees with incredible agillity, and even along non-Pyrenaic ares such as Zenauri, in the Basque Country, or the caves of Muskia and Mailuxe. They are collectively known as the Basajun, the lords of the forests.

The description is that of a creature endowed with extraordinary physical force, great agility and speed of travel, consierable height, quite taller than an average man, and fully anthropopmorhic features, covered in long hair and sometimes described as having long claws.

Many people believed that these creatures posessed the secret of cultivating wheat and that humans learned from them how to plant and harvest it. They are also considered as the first ironsmiths and millwrights, from whom humans learned the secret of the saw, the millwheel and the welding of metals. Basajaun is considered as the protective spirit of flocks, and up to only a few years ago, Basque shepherds held the belief that when animals caused their bells to ring at the same time, it meant that the Basajaun was near. Shepherds found this reassuring, safe in the knowledge that their herds would not be decimated by wolves.

Legend and reality have become interwoven, but J.M. Satrústegui points out in his book Mitos y Creencias that livestock farmers in Valcarlos and Ondorrola were fully convinced of this creature’s existence. He even managed to secure the testimony of an elder who told him that he would receive visits from the basajauns at his homestead, but never knew why. They had not visited him for a long time. Another eyewitness account mentions a sighting of a young Basajaun basking in the sun at the opening to the Mailuxe cave, and the added description of this creature as being blond.

In Basque mythology, the basajaun (plural: basajaunak) is a spirit dwelling in caves or in the woods who protects flocks of livestock and teaches skills such as agriculture and ironworking to humans.

The basajaun also exists in Aragonese mythology in the valleys of Tena, Ansó, and Broto under the names Basajarau, Bonjarau, or Bosnerau. Fifteenth-century carvings depicting the basajaunak can be seen in Burgos Cathedral and in the monastery of Santa María la Real in Najera.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

Email • Facebook • Twitter •