Elizondo

Elizondo lies in Navarre, a Pyrenean kingdom that historically stretched across both sides of the western Pyrenees, with Pamplona as its capital. In the mountainous north the Vascones escaped large-scale Roman settlement, and neither Visigoths nor Franks fully subjugated the area. Basque victory at Roncevaux Pass in 778 and the election of Iñigo Arista after another battle there in 824 established a Basque kingdom later called Navarre, which reached its height under Sancho III in the early eleventh century.

After Sancho III’s death in 1035 the kingdom was divided and never fully recovered its political power, though pilgrimage and trade along the Way of Saint James increased its commercial importance. Navarre lost key western Basque districts to Castile in 1200 and became landlocked; the native line of kings ended in 1234, and the crown intermarried with French dynasties while Navarrese laws and institutions survived. The death of Queen Blanche I in 1441 opened a civil war between the Beaumont and Agramont factions, with Castilian-Aragonese interference.

In 1512 Ferdinand the Catholic invaded Navarre; Queen Catherine and King John III withdrew north of the Pyrenees, while south of the mountains Navarre was annexed to Castile in 1515 but kept a separate status and home rule. Tensions with Madrid came to a head in 1794 when Manuel Godoy tried to suppress Navarrese and Basque self-government. By 1778, 121,000 of 227,000 inhabitants were Basque speakers, still the largest number in the Basque territories.