Ainarak

Basque-French singer and composer Anne Etchegoyen conducts this documentary, which in its original Basque version is 'Ainarak', which refers to the word "swallow".

The documentary tells the story of the thousands of girls and women from the Spanish regions of Navarre and Aragon who were known as "swallows" because they wore black clothes and undertook every winter season a migratory journey, quite like the birds, from the Pyrenees to the Maule. They would go to work in the espadrille factories and then return home in the spring to support their families or start a new life. This phenomenon occurred in the seventy years between 1870 and 1940. They were women, sometimes as young as twelve-year-old girls, who worked sixteen hours a day to earn enough money. They set out on Rosary Day, October 7, and would only return when the spring snows had melted and the path was clear.

Anne Etchegoyen follows that same path, the one that connected two very different Europes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The documentary aims to shed light on the historical and personal circumstances that led these thousands of women and young girls to emigrate, relying on historical documentation such as archives, photographs and interviews.

• Documentary
• Adventure