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Iruña-Pamplona.  Everything is ready for the Basque Sheepherders in America celebration on September 15.  This year’s event marks the seventh organized by the Euskal Artzinak Ameriketan, an active association that is comprised by a Board of a dozen of returned herders and their descendants. They are the nucleus of a much larger group of people that in prior editions have succeeded in gathering around one thousand people between herders and their families. 

According to event organizers, this year’s celebration will include a special remembrance of Kepa Mallea, friend of the association that was killed last year in Santutxu. Mallea created an important database of immigrant shepherds. 

The program will begin at 10:30 with mass at the San Nicolas church, with the collaboration of the Otxote Orbela and Bankako Menditarrak choir.  Following, there will a visit to the Weapons Room at the Citadel, an institutional act organized by the Government of Navarre and Iruña-Pamplona’s City Hall.  At noon there will be music at the public college Iturrama, where lunch will also be served closing out the day’s celebration. 

The celebration is being preceded by an exhibit on the life of Basque herders in the US, that can be seen until September 14 at the Palacio del Condestable in Pamplona.  This is the 7th edition of the event.  The first took place in 2006 in Lesaka, and afterwards there was a double celebration in Aldude and Gernika, in Elizondo, in Auritz-Burguete, in Sunbilla and last year in Eugi-Zubiri, where 700 people gathered for lunch.

-For more information go to the Euskal Artzinak Ameriketan Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Euskal-Artzainak-Ameriketan/106758232726704