Basque Country

[goldvermilion87]

How common or uncommon would it be for someone who lived in Basque country to speak English?  I am not finding anything about that online

The reason I would like to know, is that I want to put a small family in a story where at least the parents neither speak nor understand English. Another character recognizes this because he can tell where they

Comments

[channonyarrow]

I had a friend in Valencia whose mother knew Spanish, but preferred Catalan, and had no English at all, if that helps. Her husband spoke at least Spanish, English and Catalan, and may have spoken French; the kids all spoke Spanish, Catalan and a third language - as I recall, two spoke English and the third knew German. So that's extremely anecdotal, but I guess I would say that it's entirely reasonable to assume, particularly in Spain, that someone doesn't speak English.

On some slightly firmer ground, I did some research for a character from Occitania a couple years back and decided that if he was from Carcassonne, he could get away with not even speaking French; though Occitan is being destroyed, particularly in places like Toulouse, it's believed to be the first language of up to a million people in Occitania. Since Euskara is spoken by about 25% of Basques, I can't see any reason why you'd need to assume that the characters would have to speak English; it seems more likely to me that they'd be learning Spanish as a second language. Do you have any information that English is a required language in school at the time that the parents would have been students?