Gloria Totoricagüena Egurrola, 2025 Manuel Lekuona Award from Eusko Ikaskuntza

Gloria Totoricagüena Egurrola (Boise, Idaho, United States, 1961), a researcher on the diaspora and promoter of Basque culture around the world, will receive the 2025 Manuel Lekuona Award from Eusko Ikaskuntza, an award established in 1983 to recognize individuals who have made outstanding contributions to Basque culture.

The daughter of a family that emigrated from Gernika after the bombing of April 26, 1937, Gloria Totoricagüena studied Political Science at Boise State University, where she also earned a master's degree in Education, adding to the one she had obtained at the University of Montevideo, Uruguay, in Latin American Politics. In 2000, she received her doctorate from the London School of Economics and Political Science with a comparative thesis on the preservation of Basque identity in the diasporas of six countries in the Americas, Europe, and Oceania.

She was director of the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno, where she also taught classes, gave lectures, and held talks, as she would also do at Stanford and Boise universities.

The jury for the 2025 Lekuona Award has highlighted Gloria Totoricagüena as “a pioneer in research into the Basque diaspora in its cultural, diplomatic, commercial, historical, political, and institutional aspects,” who has contributed to international awareness of our culture and, in addition, to the positioning of Euskal Herria on the world stage.

In his international research, he has gathered a unique wealth of oral and documentary information on history, sociology, anthropology, and politics in Australia, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, the Philippines, Ireland, Peru, the United Kingdom, and Uruguay, as well as in the Basque Country itself. The result of this effort is the most comprehensive scientific , both qualitative and quantitative, on the Basque diaspora.

Her work, which ranges from publications to exhibitions and cultural or business projects, highlights the diversity and cohesion of the global Basque community, while demonstrating the universal value of respecting and understanding the identities of migrants in different countries. Furthermore, her connection to values such as human development and the culture of peace is evident.

The author of an extensive bibliography, her publications on Basque-American themes alone amount to 800 pages plus hundreds of photographs on the lives and experiences of individuals, families, and communities settled in the United States.

All in all, the 2025 Manuel Lekuona Award from Eusko Ikaskuntza recognizes both Gloria Totoricagüena's extensive intellectual activity and her work as a mediator and bridge between Basque and American companies and institutions. In this regard, it is worth highlighting the role she played in the design and management of the Think Tank Pentsamendua, Basque Global Initiatives during the government of Lehendakari Ibarretxe.

He currently divides his time between Boise and Bilbao, and chairs two consulting firms specializing in multicultural research, on the one hand, and business relations and cultural and commercial diplomacy to and from the Basque Country, on the other.

Selection and presentation of the 2025 Lekuona Award

Since 2014, the opinion of the Global Basque Community has been sought through open voting to decide the winner of the Manuel Lekuona Award. The result is then validated by an Institutional Jury which, in this edition, was made up of representatives from Barandiaran Fundazioa, Euskal Kultur Erakundea, Eresbil, Etxepare Euskal Institutua, Euskarabidea, Real Sociedad Bascongada de los Amigos del País, and UN Etxea, as well as Eusko Ikaskuntza. True to its identity, Eusko Ikaskuntza guarantees territorial representation, both in the open call for votes addressed to its members and the Global Basque Community, and in the composition of the jury, made up of qualified representatives from all the territories of Euskal Herria.

The bronze sculpture created by Remigio Mendiburu, which embodies the Manuel Lekuona Award, will be presented at a public ceremony in 2026, probably in the spring.

(Translated with DeepL.com)
 

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