Federico Krutwig

Who was Federico Krutwig?

Federico Krutwig Sagredo was a Spanish Basque writer and politician, author of several books.

Along with Felix Likiniano, he tried to create some resistance to the Francoist regime after the Spanish Civil War. The thought of both authors, melding Basque nationalism and Anarchism gave birth to a minor political current known as Anarkoabertzalism, which eventually merged within the hybrid of Marxism and Anarchism known as Autonomism.

He was born in 15 May 1921 in Getxo, the son of a bourgeois family of German origin. He taught himself the Basque language.

He joined the Basque-Language Academy in 1943, where he favoured the standardisation of Basque around the Labourdine dialect of the first printed books in Basque, and with an etymological orthography. However, the Academy preferred the Guipuscoan dialect as the basis of Unified Basque. Krutwig's Basque language standardisation proposal was not to be applied beyond the members of the Jakintza Baitha Hellenophile society.

In 1952, after rejecting Luis Villasante joining the Basque-Language Academy, and after his criticisms to the position of the Catholic Church in reference to the Basque language, he went into exile in France.