Gipuzkoa will award the 2025 Gold Medal to singer Lourdes Iriondo, who died in 2005

The Provincial Council of Gipuzkoawill award this year's Gold Medal  to singer, writer and professor Lourdes Iriondo on the 20th anniversary ofher death, with which she will recognize her contribution to Basque song and children's literature and her work as a "woman ahead of her time".

The event, which will take place next December, will be a "moving and special" tribute, organized in collaboration with the family and the environment of the honored, as announced this Tuesday at a press conference by the Foral spokeswoman, Irune Berasaluze.

The Governing Council held this Wednesday approved the award of the Gold Medal to Lourdes Iriondo (San Sebastián, 1937-Urnieta, 2005), the second posthumous to be awarded by the Government of Gipuzkoa, the first to Mikel Laboa in 2008.

The objective of the award is "to bring to the present day the extensive and innovative work carried out by Lourdes Iriondo in revitalizing the Basque Euskera and Basque culture and to do justice to ensure that his legacy occupies the place he deserves in the history of the territory," said Berasaluze.

Lourdes Iriondo was one of the founders of the avant-garde movement Ez dok Amairu , and her songs, alone, with Xabier Lete or in collaboration with other artists, "became a reference for the collective memory of the 1960s and 1970s," she says.

Iriondo was also a pioneer in terms of equality, because she had "the courage and ability to place creative women in public space, in a closed and limited society," while making a fundamental contribution in the field of children's literature in Basque, she has stressed.

Berasaluze has summed up that "Gipuzkoa pays tribute to Lourdes Iriondo for everything we owe him, for his path as a creative woman, and for justice to make his name and legacy written in the history of our land."