Patriotic song sparks Basque wedding brawl

Alex Dunham | 8 Oct 2014, 16:35 

Four guests at a wedding in the Basque city of San Sebastián are facing two years in jail after the bride’s and the groom’s families got into a fight over a song played during celebrations.

Up to a hundred guests took to the dance floor after enjoying a wedding banquet at San Sebastian’s emblematic Hotel Londres.

The bride’s family, from Spain’s Basque country, were playing host to the groom’s, most of whom had travelled over from the northern Spanish city of Valladolid.

Everything was going well until a friend of the bride asked the DJ to play a Basque nationalist ballad called ‘Oi ama Eskual Herri’.

According to local daily El Diario Vasco, the groom asked the DJ to change the song because it was killing the mood.

This in turn angered the man and other relatives of the bride who took it as a lack of respect towards Basque patriotism.

Punches soon started flying between the two families with even the disc jockey getting involved in the brawl.

Five people were injured in the fight, including two policemen who were called up to break up the scuffle.

“Some of them were more ‘long live España’ whereas the others were more ‘long live ETA (Basque separatist group),” one of the guests told the court two years after the incident, as a means of describing how the two families’ Basque and Spanish ideologies clashed.

The accused are now facing up to two years in prison and fines of nearly €2,000 (€2,500) for their role in the fight and for attacking the police officers. 

Source http://m.thelocal.es/20141008/wedding-fight-song-groom-bride-basque-san-sebastian-spain