Hello Rochelle Thorne, thank you for your lovely response. I’m glad you had a great time here in the Basque country, come any time, this land is full of surprises, great cuisine and incredible festival all year round. Now, here are a series of books I recommend:

Mark Kurlansky’s The Basque History of the World: The Story of a Nation is a great book to get to know better the roots of the Basque culture and its ancestry.

If you’re interested in learning Basque, check out Alan King’s The Basque Language: A Practical Introduction and Basque Sociolinguistics: Language, Society, and Culture, by Estibaliz Amorrortu, it takes a brief look at the history of Basque, outlines several issues concerning the language such as gender, social identity, language maintenance/revitalization, and ethnicity.

Ondo izan!