, Biscay

Biscay

Biscay is a province of Spain and a historical territory of the Basque Country, heir of the ancient Lord of Biscay. Its capital city is Bilbao...

, Basque Country

Basque Country (autonomous community)

The Basque Country is an autonomous community of northern Spain. It includes the Basque provinces of Álava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa, also called Historical Territories....

) is a Basque

Basque people

The Basques as an ethnic group, primarily inhabit an area traditionally known as the Basque Country , a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.The Basques are known in the...

 writer and journalist.

Life

He has worked for the Euskal Telebista

Euskal Telebista

Euskal Irrati Telebista is the Basque Country's public broadcast service. Its main brand is Euskal Telebista ....

 (Basque television), as well as in several publications in the Basque language

Basque language

Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...

, such as Euskaldunon Egunkaria

Egunkaria

Egunkaria was for thirteen years the only fully Basque language newspaper in circulation, until it was closed down on February 20, 2003 by the Spanish authorities, due to allegations of an illegal association with ETA, the armed Basque separatist group. After 7 years, on 15 April 2010 the...

, Berria

Berria

Berria is the only newspaper published wholly in the Basque language and which can be read in the entirety of the Basque country. It was created after the closure of the previous Basque language newspaper, Egunkaria, by the Spanish government, after being accused of having ties with ETA...

, Gara

Gara

Gara is a bilingual newspaper published in the city of San Sebastián in the Basque Autonomous Community...

, Jakin, Argia, Nora, Zazpi Haizetara and Bertsolari, among others. As a freelance writer, he has worked in different countries, like Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

, Georgia

Georgia (country)

Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

 (including Abkhazia

Abkhazia

Abkhazia is a disputed political entity on the eastern coast of the Black Sea and the south-western flank of the Caucasus.Abkhazia considers itself an independent state, called the Republic of Abkhazia or Apsny...

 and South Ossetia

South Ossetia

South Ossetia or Tskhinvali Region is a disputed region and partly recognized state in the South Caucasus, located in the territory of the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast within the former Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic....

), Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

, Venezuela

Venezuela

Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...

, Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

, Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

, Guatemala

Guatemala

Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...

, Honduras

Honduras

Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize...

, Nicaragua

Nicaragua

Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...

, Haiti

Haiti

Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...

, Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...

, Moldova

Moldova

Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...

, Kosovo

Kosovo

Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...

 and many European nations.

He has published three books of poems, one novel and one travel book (Afrika Express, 2008) in Basque, and one guidebook in Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 about the city of Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, where he has lived and worked as correspondent. Urtzi Urrutikoetxea is the translator into Basque of the Hungarian Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 Laureate Imre Kertesz

Imre Kertész

Imre Kertész is a Hungarian Jewish author, Holocaust concentration camp survivor, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002 "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history"....

's Fateless. He has also worked in the field of bertsolaritza

Bertsolaritza

Bertsolaritza or bertsolarism is the art of singing extemporary composed songs in Basque according to various melodies and rhyming patterns...

(oral improvised poetry in the Basque language), collaborating in different projects like the book Bizkaiko Bertsogintza IV (2006). Urrutikoetxea has been the local producer in the Basque Country and translator in some audiovisual projects, such as the documentary "An Independent Mind" (2008), by Rex Bloomstein, and the report by Gundars Reders in Latvia TV (2008). He is also the Deputy President of the Euskal PEN/Basque PEN Club.

Poetry

• Gaur ere ez du atertuko 1998, Arabako Foru Aldundia
• Borroka galduetatik gatoz (We come from lost struggles)1997, Susa
• Utzidazu karmina kentzen 2000, Kutxa

Fiction

• Auzoak (Quarters, Neighborhoods) 2005, Susa (in Basque)

Travel books

• Guía de Berlín, 2005 (in Spanish)
• Afrika Express (2008, in Basque, the story of a car journey from Bilbao to Mali and Senegal)

External links

• Basque Literature
• Urtzi Urrutikoetxea Vacas in the Spanish-language Auñamendi Encyclopedia.