Jabi Baraiazarra, EMMOAko kide Antxon Iturriza, Txomin Uriarte eta Patxi Cortazarrekin, iazko BBK Mendi Film Bilbao Bizkaia jaialdian

The EMMOA-Euskal Mendi Museoa/The Basque Mountain Museum continues to make history. It has been named a member of the International Mountain Museum Alliance IMMA, at its annual meeting on April 30. 

EMMOA was founded in 2013 in Vitoria-Gasteiz, thus embodying a dream that was already mentioned in the constitution of the Basque-Navarre Mountaineering Federation in 1924. It is the primary entity responsible for the history of Basque mountaineering. It fulfils this role by acquiring, preserving, transmitting, and strengthening the dissemination of the region's heritage, as well as researching its treasures.  

The active leaders of the Foundation, with the essential collaboration of several teams of volunteers, are significant personalities of Basque mountaineering and have been dedicated for many years to the promotion of mountain culture. They are members of EMMOA's Board of Trustees 

  • Txomin Uriarte: current president of EMMOA, editor for 30 years of the magazine Pyrenaica, and member of the Tximist expedition to Everest. 
  • Antxon Iturriza: mountain chronicler since 1976, historian and writer specialized in Basque mountaineering. 
  • Patxi Cortazar: architect and mountaineer. 
  • Mari Jose Lasa: influential and enterprising person in the sphere of Basque mountaineering, widow of Antxon Bandrés - former president of the Basque Mountaineering Federation.

The incorporation to IMMA recognizes and reaffirms the work being done by EMMOA and makes it stand out both internationally and locally. Precisely, the fact that IMMA has taken the decision to accept the Basque Mountain Museum has been favourably influenced by the fact that it is a project made by and for the mountaineers of the country. They have valued the fact that it is supported by the best-known Basque mountaineers and by the rest of high-level sportspeople in the world of mountaineering. And that the mountain clubs and federations of the four territories are behind it.

It is no coincidence that the Basque Federation (EMF-FVM) and the Navarre Federation (MEKNF-FNDME), as well as the most powerful Basque and international mountain cultural event, the Mendi Film Festival, are part of the board of trustees of the EMMOA Foundation. EMMOA's collections are very diverse: Having a library, documentary warehouse, news clippings library, photo library, historical objects, interviews, and exhibitions that all form a unique heritage of the history of Basque mountaineering. 

 

EMMOA also has 900 catalogued and photographed pieces donated by protagonists of the history of Basque mountaineering. 

- 4,500 mountain and mountaineering books, including 1,500 books donated by Kartajanari (considered one of the world's best collections about the Himalayas). 

- 5,000 digitized photographs from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. 

- Continuous updating of more than 50 collections of mountaineering magazines published by publishers and clubs in the Basque Country and Spain. 

- Copies of alpine pages published in the press since 1922 are preserved, as well as complete collections of mountaineering pages published since 1976 in all Basque newspapers. 

- In collaboration with the Basque Film Library, the recovery and digitization of historical films has been facilitated, such as the Javier Garreta collection dating from the 1970s, or Fernando Larruquert's “Agur Everest”. 

- The official archives of the Basque Mountaineering Federation from 1924 to 1970 have been catalogued and digitized. A rich historical documentation on Basque mountaineering has also been compiled and studied. 

- Six permanent exhibitions and four traveling exhibitions with more than 40 places visited. 

IMMA

IMMA-International Mountain Museums Alliance, founded in 2015 under the umbrella of the United Nations, is based at the Museo Nazionale della Montagna in Turin (Italy). EMMOA has become the thirteenth member of the Alliance alongside museums and/or documentation centres in Turin, Trento, and Sondrio (Italy), Chamonix and Chambéry (France), Banff (Canada), Zakopane and Jelenia Góra (Poland), Sabadell (Catalonia), Bern (Switzerland), Pokhara (Nepal) and Brasov (Romania). 

IMMA works for the conservation, study, and promotion of mountain culture. The framework of its challenges lies in the current context of climate change, social transformation, and political alternations. EMMOA will participate in these objectives as a full member, implementing its own models and collaborating in international projects.