José de Arteche

José de Arteche Aramburu (12 March 1906 – 23 September 1971) was a Basque writer and biographer, almost always credited as José de Arteche. The Basque form of his name is Jose Artetxe Aranburu.

Born in Azpeitia, Gipuzkoa, in 1906, Arteche was bilingual in Basque and Spanish. He wrote about the Spanish Civil War and a number of biographies, including lives of Saint Cyran and Lope de Aguirre, a 16th-century Basque conquistador active in South America.

Early life The child of a Carlist couple who ran the Arteche Inn at Azpeitia, there Arteche met Doña Isabel, the sister of Alfonso XII, Antoine d'Abbadie, a patron of Basque literature, and Benito Pérez Galdós.

Basque was Arteche's mother tongue, and from an early age he was fond of reading. He was educated by French nuns at the Notre Dame school in Azpeitia and then by the Marist Brothers, where he made a friend for life, Inazio Eizmendi Manterola, who also became a writer.

Arteche died at San Sebastián (called in Basque Donostia) in 1971.

Selected works Una inquietud y cuatro preguntas (1934) San Ignacio de Loyola (Barcelona: 1941) Elcano (1942; Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1972) Urdaneta: el Dominador de Los Espacios Del Oceano Pacifico (1943) Mi Guipúzcoa (1946) Caminando (1947) Mi viaje diario (1950) S. Francisco Javier (Saragossa: Hechos y Dichos, 1951) Lope de Aguirre, Traidor: la tragedia del Fuerte Caudillo de los Invencibles Marañones (1951; San Sebastián: Caja de Ahorros de Guipúzcoa, 1974) Vida de Jesús (1955) ¡Portar bien! 1957) Saint-Cyran (de caracterología vasca) (Auñamendi, 1958) Camino y Horizonte (Pamplona: Gomez, 1960) Siluetas y recuerdos (Gómez, 1964) Lavigerie, el cardenal de Africa (1963) Rectificaciones y añadidos (1965) Discusión en Bidartea (1967) De Berceo a Carlos Santamaría (1968) El abrazo de los muertos: Diario de la Guerra Civil 1936–1939 (Icharopena, 1970) Canto a Marichu: Autobiografía (Sociedad Guipuzcoana de Ediciones y Publicaciones, 1970) El Gran Asombro (San Sebastián: Sociedad Guipuzcoana de Ediciones y Publicaciones, 1971) Canto a Joxe (1972) Un vasco en la postguerra: diario 1939-1971 (1977)

In English The Cardinal of Africa, Charles Lavigerie, Founder of the White Fathers translated by Mairin Mitchell (London, Catholic Book Club, 1964)