"Iruinkokoa" and the Basque semiotic landscape: transgressive carnival voices taken to the streets

Since 2019, the city of Pamplona has had its own popular carnival, called Iruinkokoa. Iruinkokoa is a combination of satirical play and parody, lyric oral improvisation or bertsoak (verses), live music, and a series of newly created dances that imitate traditional dances from the Basque Country as well as from other parts of Europe. They seek to understand the meanings and discourses present in the creative and performative world, both social and physical, of Iruinkokoa. They are interested in exploring how the signs used in this libertimendua can delimit spaces, dividing them into precise zones where identities are defined and represented, forms of authority are exercised, and property and rights are articulated. However, at the same time, by focusing on a carnival-like performative framework such as Iruinkokoa, they also want to study how the creativity of this group of young people contributes to this process of semiotization and helps transform this space into a representational zone that allows them to provide a public platform for displaying  the power struggles and political conflicts related to the Basque language in Pamplona.