[Menydh]

The way I see it, you are basing the idea of a Basque nation differed from the rest of Spain, predominantly in the language. You are not alone. But please, bear with me through these lines.

The problem with this approach is that language alone does not define a nation as distinct from another. But most important here is the fact that the attempts to construct a distinct Basque nation based on language, have failed consistently to explain the presence of toponymic words spread throughout the Iberian Peninsula, of ancient origin and which have a Basque root.

We usually refer to the Castilian language (Spanish language for you) as being a Romance language. But this falls short of explaining the distinctiveness of Castilian in front of other Romance languages.

This distinctiveness has been explained in terms of a Basque element present among the early speakers of Castilian. Historian and Philologist Menéndez Pidal argued that [early] Castilian was the Romance language spoken by the little romanicized Basques and Cantabrians.

However there must be part of truth in this, we must also take into account that the very name of Castilla (etymology: land of castles or of dwellers of castles, which is likely to be the same etymology as for Catalunya) changed around the year 800 AD, from the name Bardulia.

There are no doubts that the name Bardulia originates in the Bárdulos (or Várdulos, from Latin Varduli; notice that in Castilian language the fricative /v/ sound is confused with /b/, which is also a characteristic of the Basque language where fricativeness does not exist). These Varduli were a pre-Roman people whose lands were in the eastern part of the modern Basque Country, and who were displaced by the Pyrnean Vasconi around the time of the decline of the Roman Empire. And so were two other tribes to the west of the Varduli: the Caristii and the Autrigones. Roughly around 95% of the modern territory that we know as Basque Country was occupied by the Basques during the centuries VI and VII AD, following the chaos left by the removal of Roman Legions to protect the Eastern Roman Empire and the "efficient" administration of the Goths (or lack thereof).

Not surprisingly, the name for Basques in Spanish used to be Vascongados, a word that has been long displaced by that of Vascos. Whereas the people to the west of the modern Basque Country, in northern Navarre and beyond, were referred to as Vascones. In fact Vascongado derives from vasconizado (through its Latin correspondence, according to M. y P.), which means basquicized.

So now we know that so many of these Basques are, in fact, "basquicized" peoples. Probably what remained of the Autrigones, Varduli and Caristii, plus an adstratrum of Vascones.

The question is who were these Varduli who migrated to Bardulia (or ancient Castile). Although there is no certainty about this, it seems that the Autrigones and the Caristii might have been Celtic (as in celticized) peoples. But some scholars denied this point. More doubts are casted over the Varduli, since they might have been a people of a similar stratum as the Vasconi.

Would that explain the strong influence of Basque in the Castilian language? It might, but we must remember that there is no evidence of a unified Basque language at the time, and until fairly recently so-called Basque language was a series of dialects which could be more or less understand each other. That is until S. Arana came in the XIXth century with an artificial language which he called Batua. And so another possibility would be that the Varduli spoke a language similar to Basque, but not necessarily Basque since they were not Vasconi (and maybe only because of that reason).

So, is early Castilian the rude romanced language spoken by little romanicized "Basques"? or is it the language spoken by little romanicized ancient Iberic peoples other than Basques? And if the latter, why if they were not Basques their language influenced (in sounds as well as in vocabulary) that early Romance language as the Basque would have distinctively done?

There are two ancient languages which are likely related to the Basque language: Aquitanian and Iberian languages.

And there are two modern languages strongly influenced by any of these: Gascon and Castilian languages. Other languages such as Aragonese is also strongly influenced by Basque. But even in Catalan, a more Romance language, we find many words like Garriga or Garrotxa which are clearly of a Basque root. Or we find the name of García, of Basque etymology, in an early king of Galicia and no few of Castile.

I'm not going to get into details about the deep character of the Spanish in general, and of the Basques in particular. But suffice to say that if you knew us, you would know that the Basque is the primitive soul of the Spaniard. The essence. We are Basques who speak Romance languages. Not one, but many.