Logroño witch trials

The Basque witch trials of the seventeenth century represent the last attempt at rooting out supposed witchcraft from Navarre by the Spanish Inquisition, after a series of episodes erupted during the sixteenth century following the end of military operations in the conquest of Iberian Navarre, until 1524.

The trial of the Basque witches began in January 1609 at Logroño, near Navarre, bordering Basque territory. It was influenced by similar persecutions conducted by Pierre de Lancre in the bordering Labourd, French Basque Country. Although the number of people executed was small in comparison to other persecutions in Europe, it is considered the biggest single event of its kind in terms of the number of people investigated: by the end of the phenomenon, some 7,000 cases had been examined by the Inquisition.

Process

Logroño, though not a Basque city, was the setting for an Inquisition tribunal responsible for the Kingdom of Navarre, and for the provinces of Alava, Gipuzkoa, Biscay, La Rioja and the North of Burgos and Soria. As was typical of " witch trials", those accused of witchcraft were predominantly women, however this tribunal also targeted children and men, including priests allegedly guilty of healing with ''nóminas'', which are amulets bearing the names of saints.

The first phase ended in 1610, with a declaration of auto-da-fé against thirty-one of the accused, five or six of whom were burned to death including Maria de Arburu. Five people were included in the declaration symbolically, as they had died before the ''auto-da-fé''.

Thereafter proceedings were suspended until the inquisitors had a chance to gather further evidence on what they believed to be a widespread witch cult in the Basque region. Alonso de Salazar Frías, the junior inquisitor and lawyer in training, was designated to examine the matter at length. Armed with an Edict of Grace, promising pardon to all those who voluntarily reported themselves and denounced their accomplices, he traveled across the countryside during the year 1611. He visited mainly the vicinity of Zugarramurdi, near what is now the French-Spanish border, where a cave and a water stream (Olabidea or ''Infernuko erreka'', "Hell's stream") was said to be the meeting place of the witches.

As was usual in cases of this kind, denunciations flowed in. Frías finally returned to Logroño with " confessions" from nearly 2,000 people, 1,384 of whom were children between the ages of seven and fourteen, implicating a further 5,000 named individuals. Most of 1,802 people retracted their statements before Frías, attributing their confessions to torture. The evidence gathered covered 11,000 pages in all. Only six people out of 1,802 maintained their confessions and claimed to have returned to sabbaths.

Of about 7,000 people accused in the Basque witch trials, only six were ultimately executed: Domingo de Subildegui, María de Echachute, Graciana Xarra, Maria Baztan de Borda, Maria de Arburu and Petri de Joangorena. They were condemned to be executed by the Inquisition because they had repeatedly refused to confess, regret and ask for mercy, despite having been accused for a number of sorcery acts by several different people, and burned at the stake, alongside the effigies of five more who had died in prison prior to execution, in Logrono 1 November 1610.

In the stir of the events, proceedings were started in Hondarribia in 1611, some 35 km away from Zugarramurdi and 19 km from St-Jean-de-Luz, main hotspots of witchcraft allegations against presumed female witches accused of casting spells on living creatures and meeting in Jaizkibel in akelarres, led by a he-goat shaped Devil. Men in this Bidasoa region were recruited in droves for Basque whaling, leaving women on their own (sometimes along with the priests, children, and elders) for long periods. According to evidence given by a witness as attested in the record, "the Devil summoned in the Gascon language those from San Sebastián and Pasaia, and in Basque those from Irun and Hendaye