The Road to Modern Consumer Society: Changes in Everyday Life in the Rural Basque Country in the Early Twentieth Century

The aim of this article is to show the process of transformation of everyday life in the rural Basque society of the beginning of the twentieth century. It is generally accepted the vision of the rural Basque Country situated in the past and contrary to the changes of modern society. However, a detailed research shows a different condition and the incipient change in different aspects of everyday life. The increase of literacy thanks to the development of the educational system, the improvement of the means of transport, the birth of an incipient consumer society and the appearance of modern leisure are examples of this change in a supposedly ‘old fashioned’ rural Basque Country. This process of transformation took place in the last decade of the nineteenth century but most evidently in the beginning of the following century, which places the social development of the rural Basque Country sooner than it had been thought.