Eusebio López: Impresor y vascófilo lodosano [Eusebio López: printer and Basque-language scholar from Lodosa]

Abstract

The Nafarroa Oinez organised by Lodosa’s Ikastola Muskaria in 2001 led Euskaltzaindia to hold one of its meetings in this village in the Navarrese Ribera, taking advantage of the events held on the eve to perform a public act. One of the papers dealt with the figure of the Lodosa-born printer Eusebio López. The presence at lunch of his grandson, Xabier López-Mendizabal, and the information he supplied to the author of the present article, meant that the conversation wandered off into other areas than those initially imagined. Eusebio López was a Carlist good and true, captain of the pretender’s Royal Escort. During his exile in Mont-de Marsan, he learnt the trade of bookbinder and, on his return to the peninsula, went to live in Tolosa, marrying the printer, and daughter of printers, Juliana Mendizabal Lalama. Eusebio López gave the family press new life by publishing some of the most important Basque works of the day, such as Campión’s Grammar and Aizkibel and Novia de Salcedo’s dictionaries.