Gipuzkoa in the context of "San Sebastián"

Basque (/ˈbæsk, ˈbɑːsk/ BASK, BAHSK; euskara [eus̺ˈkaɾa]) is a language spoken by Basques and other residents of the Basque Country, a region that straddles the westernmost Pyrenees in adjacent parts of southwestern France and northern Spain. Basque is classified as a language isolate (unrelated to any other known languages), the only one in Europe. The Basques are indigenous to and primarily inhabit the Basque Country. The Basque language is spoken by 806,000 Basques in all territories. Of them, 93.7% (756,000) are in the Spanish area of the Basque Country and the remaining 6.3% (51,000) are in the French portion.

Native speakers live in a contiguous area that includes parts of four Spanish provinces and the three "ancient provinces" in France. Gipuzkoa, most of Biscay, a few municipalities on the northern border of Álava and the northern area of Navarre formed the core of the remaining Basque-speaking area before measures were introduced in the 1980s to strengthen Basque fluency. By contrast, most of Álava, the westernmost part of Biscay, and central and southern Navarre are predominantly populated by native speakers of Spanish, either because Basque was replaced by either Navarro-Aragonese or Spanish over the centuries (as in most of Álava and central Navarre), or because it may never have been spoken there (as in parts of Enkarterri and south-eastern Navarre).

The Basque Country or Basque Autonomous Community (/bæsk, bɑːsk/), also officially called Euskadi ([eus̺kadi]), is an autonomous community in northern Spain. It includes the Basque provinces of Álava (Araba), Biscay (Bizkaia), and Guipúzcoa (Gipuzkoa). It surrounds two enclaves, Treviño and Valle de Villaverde.

The Basque Country was granted the status of nationality, attributed by the Spanish Constitution of 1978. The autonomous community is based on the Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Country, a foundational legal document providing the framework for the development of the Basque people on Southern Basque Country. Parallelly, Navarre, which narrowly rejected a joint statute of autonomy in 1932, was granted a separate chartered statute in 1982.

The Cantabrian Sea is the term used mostly in Spain to describe the coastal sea of the Atlantic Ocean that borders the northern coast of Spain and the southwest side of the Atlantic coast of France, included in the Bay of Biscay. It extends from Cabo Ortegal in the province of A Coruña, to the mouth of the river Adour, near the city of Bayonne on the coast of the department of Pyrénées-Atlantiques in French Basque Country. The Cantabrian Sea contains the Avilés Canyons System.

The sea borders 800 km (500 mi) of coastline shared by the Spanish provinces of A Coruña, Lugo, Asturias, Cantabria, Biscay and Gipuzkoa, and the French area of Labourd.

Erromintxela (Basque pronunciation: [eromintʃela] ) is the distinctive language of a group of Romani living in the Basque Country, who also go by the name Erromintxela. It is sometimes called Basque Caló or Errumantxela in English; caló vasco, romaní vasco, or errominchela in Spanish; and euskado-rromani or euskado-romani in French. Although detailed accounts of the language date to the end of the 19th century, linguistic research began only in the 1990s.

The Erromintxela are the descendants of a 15th-century wave of Kalderash Roma, who entered the Basque Country via France. Both ethnically and linguistically, they are distinct from the Caló-speaking Romani people in Spain and the Cascarot Romani people of the Northern Basque Country. Erromintxela is a mixed language (referred to as Para-Romani in Romani linguistics), deriving most of its vocabulary from Kalderash Romani but using Basque grammar, similar to the way the Angloromani language of the Roma in England mixes Romani vocabulary and English grammar. The development of the mixed language was facilitated by the unusually deep integration of the Erromintxela people into Basque society and the resultant bilingualism in Basque. The language is in decline; most of the perhaps 1000 remaining speakers live on the coast of Labourd and in the mountainous regions of Soule, Navarre, Gipuzkoa and Biscay.

Labourd (French pronunciation: [labuʁ]; Basque: Lapurdi; Latin: Lapurdum; Gascon: Labord) is a former French province and part of the present-day Pyrénées Atlantiques département of Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. It is one of the traditional Basque provinces, and identified as one of the territorial component parts of the Basque Country by many, especially by the Basque nationalists.

Labourd extends from the Pyrenees to the river Adour, along the Bay of Biscay. To the south are Gipuzkoa and Navarre in Spain, to the east is Lower Navarre, and to the north are the Landes. It has an area of almost 900 km (347 sq mi) and a population of over 200,000 (115,154 in 1901; 209,913 in 1990), making it the most populous of the three French Basque provinces. Over 25% of the inhabitants speak Basque (17% in the Bayonne-Anglet-Biarritz zone, 43% in the rest). Labourd has also long had a Gascon-speaking tradition, notably along the banks of the river Adour but also more diffusely throughout the whole viscounty (about 20% in Bayonne-Anglet-Biarritz).

Álava (Spanish: [ˈalaβa]) or Araba (Basque pronunciation: [aˈɾaba]), officially Araba/Álava, is a province of Spain and a historical territory of the Basque Country, heir of the ancient Lordship of Álava, former medieval Catholic bishopric and now Latin titular see.

Its capital city, Vitoria-Gasteiz, is also the seat of the political main institutions of the Basque Autonomous Community. It borders the Basque provinces of Biscay and Gipuzkoa to the north, the community of La Rioja to the south, the province of Burgos (in the community of Castile and León) to the west and the community of Navarre to the east. The Enclave of Treviño, surrounded by Alavese territory, is however part of the province of Burgos, thus belonging to the autonomous community of Castile and León, not Álava.