Espartin: the Basque Word for Espadrille

The Basque word for espadrille is espartin, as both the French Wiktionary and the French Wikipedia article record. With the Basque plural ending -ak, a pair becomes espartinak, the form English Wikipedia gives; its etymology note also uses espartina. Like the Catalan espardenya and the Occitan espardilha, the word visibly carries the old name of esparto grass, espart, which was once braided into the sole.

The shoe that came before

Basque has another, older word for footwear: abarka, a sandal cut from one piece of calf leather and tied with braided wool laces around the socks. English Wikipedia says it was replaced for farm work by espadrilles and rubber sandals, and now survives mainly in dance. French Wikipedia confirms the order: in the Basque Country, espadrilles "supplanted the abarka". Read more on abarka.

Mauléon, the Basque espadrille town

If the word espartin has one home, it is Mauléon-Licharre (Maule-Lextarre, the name used by the Basque encyclopedia Auñamendi), capital of Soule, the smallest of the seven Basque provinces, according to the Pyrénées-Atlantiques tourist board. The Basque encyclopedia Auñamendi gives the key dates:

The Auñamendi article links the start of the trade to Basque emigrants in Argentina ordering soles from home. The sole material changed with time: esparto rope from Spain first, then jute from India and other Asian countries.

The swallows

Many of those seasonal workers were young women from the Salazar, Roncal and Ansó valleys, on the Spanish side. The Basque ethnography site Labayru explains that they were nicknamed swallows (golondrinas in Spanish, hirondelles in French) because they left home at the start of October, returned in spring and dressed in black. They walked across the mountains with a small bundle and a wooden bench, worked from dawn to dusk, and were paid by the piece.

Is the espadrille Basque, then?

The Basques have their own word and a strong industrial history, but the shoe is shared. French Wikipedia presents it as a Pyrenean shoe worn from Catalonia to the Basque Country, and the oldest written name, from 1322, is Catalan. We compare the two traditions on Basque vs Catalan espadrilles, and the full list of names is on the home page.