Eusko Ikaskuntza was set up in 1918 in order to protect and develop Basque Culture. For this purpose and throughout its already prolonged history, logically conditioned by the political and social situation in each moment, Eusko Ikaskuntza has carried out relevant activities with its public events, meetings, research, studies and publications of a very varied type and nature.

In this situation, the fourteen Congresses held on Basque Studies have become singular events during which to contrast the situation of the topics under study in each of them and to monitor the situation of Eusko Ikaskuntza itself in the fulfilment of its foundational purpose.

In that same line Eusko Ikaskuntza is now ready to hold a new Congress with the beginning of the millennium - its Fifteenth Congress, which is intended to have a more global character than the immediately previous Congress. This offers us a good opportunity to reflect on the current state of the Art, Culture and Science in the Basque Country within the new social, institutional, technological and political co-ordinates in which we live.

Among the most relevant factors that allow us to contextualise our environment and our society and that are part of the framework for the development of each one of the topics that are to be studied in the Congress, there are those related with globalisation as a new world-scale reality. This trend seems to be as irreversible in terms of economics as in need of human values in social terms. There is the role of an emerging civil society at both global and local levels which has unprecedented characteristics and a strong, but often little-recognised, implantation in the Basque Country. There is also the existence of a Europe that is fortunately very different to that of 1918 and to which, for the first time in History, we are incorporating ourselves, together with the formidable development of the new technologies, the society of information and knowledge.

That is precisely the context that we have the intention to study, inasmuch as it conditions and influences our reality. Starting from there, we can proceed to diagnose the situation of Culture, Art and Science in the Basque Country, paying special attention to what the new technologies have to offer in their development and dissemination.

The extent of the topics under study in the upcoming Congress that we are now introducing suggests the need to articulate it in six different sections, which because of agenda-related reasons, will take place in a parallel and simultaneous manner. Of these six sections, three refer to the analysis of the changes in our environment and their internal influence and the remaining three, to the study of specific topics in the afore-mentioned historical, institutional, technological and social framework.

The Organisation of the Sections as well as their general agenda will be as follows:

With this thematic distribution we intend to obtain a current diagnosis both of relevant external facts and of the current state of Culture, Art and Science in the Basque Country, as well as of the possibilities that the new technologies offer for their world-wide dissemination.

We also think that the Congress will be the most adequate context for the presentation of both conferences and specific research. Such conferences and research refer to topics that affect social, economic, scientific, cultural and artistic areas that are being developed with the objective of being presented within this upcoming XV Basque Studies Congress that we are now introducing.

San Sebastian, December 2000

Xabier ALKORTA ANDONEGI