The trikitixa, the two-row Basque diatonic button accordion heard at every romería and festival square from Bilbao to Pamplona, sounds like it should be ancient. Basque culture markets itself on depth of time: Euskara is one of the oldest living languages in Europe, and the alboka and the txalaparta both carry folk histories that predate written record. The trikitixa does not belong in that company. Its first documented appearance is a single written line from 1889, when the historian Juan Carlos Guerra noted a new diatonic accordion being played at the Urkiola pilgrimage festival in Bizkaia. That is the same year construction finished on the Eiffel Tower.
That gap matters because it changes what the trikitixa actually demonstrates about Basque culture. An instrument that arrived within living memory of the 19th century and was fully absorbed into Basque identity within two generations says something more interesting than an unbroken ancient tradition would. It shows how quickly the Basque Country can take an outside object, in this case most likely an accordion carried in by Alpine railway workers or sold out of a Bilbao shop, and make it feel indigenous. It also explains a detail almost no English-language source mentions: the earliest surviving photograph of the instrument was not taken in Bizkaia or Gipuzkoa, the provinces most associated with it today. It was taken in Navarra.
This article draws on the documented account maintained by the Euskal Herriko Trikitixa Elkartea, the trikitixa association, reproduced by the North American Basque Organizations, cross-checked against Wikipedia’s sourced entry and its own citation trail, and on the recorded history of the instrument’s 1980s revival. It also draws on encierro.com’s own reporting on Pamplona’s txistularis, where the trikitixa turns out to have a small, genuine, and rarely mentioned role in San Fermín’s own daily festival program.
The 1889 Paper Trail, and Why Navarra Has the Earliest Photo
The written record starts in 1889 at Urkiola, a pilgrimage site in Bizkaia, where Juan Carlos Guerra recorded the presence of a new diatonic accordion. Nothing older has been documented. Historians point to two explanations for how the instrument arrived, and the sources treat them as complementary rather than settled. The more widely accepted account holds that Italian immigrants from the Alps introduced the diatonic button accordion generally (an instrument type devised in Vienna in 1829) into the Basque Country, most likely through the port of Bilbao. A second account, from researcher Kepa Pérez de Urraza, focuses on retail and performance rather than immigration: the Zengoitia shop in Bilbao sold the instrument, with Höhner likely the first branded make available, and the accordion spread outward from that single point of sale. Basque accordion historian Aingeru Berguices traced the age of surviving players moving eastward from Bilbao, through Arratia, Amorebieta, and Gernika into Lea Artibai, and on to Elgoibar and Elgeta in Gipuzkoa, meaning the youngest players were furthest from Bilbao. That pattern supports Bilbao, not Gipuzkoa, as the original entry point.
The photographic record adds a detail the written record doesn’t: a trikiti appears in a photograph taken in 1890 in Altsasu, a Navarran railway junction town. It is the earliest surviving image of the instrument in existence, and it comes from Navarra rather than from Bizkaia or Gipuzkoa. The location fits the railway theory neatly. Altsasu sat directly on the rail line historians already point to as a likely path for the instrument’s spread, and a photograph from a junction town a year after the Urkiola mention is exactly what that theory would predict. No source treats this as a coincidence worth building an origin myth around, and neither does this article. But it is a fact almost no English-language coverage of the trikitixa mentions: the oldest surviving photo of the instrument that supposedly belongs to Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa was taken in Navarra.
What the Trikitixa Actually Is, and the Argument Over Its Name
Mechanically, the trikitixa is a two-row diatonic button accordion with 23 buttons on the right hand and 12 bass buttons on the left. The right-hand rows are keyed a fifth apart, and each button sounds two different notes depending on which direction the bellows move, a bisonoric layout shared with most diatonic accordions worldwide. What sets it apart is size: it runs smaller than a standard piano-key accordion, built to be carried into a small parish church or danced around a village square rather than played seated on a stage.
Even the instrument’s name is disputed among the researchers who study it, and the sources disagree honestly enough that this article treats it as an open question rather than settling it artificially. Musicologist Juan Mari Beltrán argues the word is onomatopoeic, imitating the sound of the tambourine that traditionally accompanies the accordion (trikiti-trikiti-trikiti), and that the term originally named a broader ensemble that also included the alboka and the txistu before narrowing to mean the accordion specifically. Researcher Kepa Pérez de Urraza instead treats trikitixa as fundamentally the name of a duo: one person on the accordion, one on the pandereta, the frame drum traditionally played by a woman, sometimes decorated by hand with a drawing of her partner. Both readings agree on one point: the accordion was never meant to be heard alone. The classic repertoire pairs a stately fandango with a faster arin-arin in a single set, built for baile a lo agarrado (couples dancing in an embrace) and the looser, unpartnered baile suelto that traditionally closed out an evening of set dances.
Hell’s Bellows: Why the Church Fought an Accordion
The trikitixa did not arrive to universal welcome. The instrument found its footing in romerías, the outdoor pilgrimage festivals of rural Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, and in the cider houses and country inns where semi-professional trikitilaris earned a living playing for dancers. The Catholic Church took a specific, documented position against it, reportedly labeling the instrument “hell’s bellows” on the grounds that its fast, danceable music encouraged impropriety among Basque youth. Researcher Pérez de Urraza frames this less as a moral panic and more as a real cultural fault line: in an era of religious conservatism and heavy social control in the countryside, the trikitixa offered rural people, and especially unmarried men and women, one of their few sanctioned chances to be near each other in public. He describes the tradition as tacitly enforcing its own limits: trikitilaris typically played until marriage, after which continuing to perform was viewed as improper.
That rural, semi-professional world held until the 1940s, when mass migration out of the Basque countryside and into cities or abroad emptied out the trikitixa’s traditional audience. By the mid-20th century, only a small number of aging trikitilariak were left keeping the music alive at all, a near-disappearance with the same shape as the alboka’s own mid-century close call and the txalaparta’s decline in the same decades.
The 1980s Split: Two Musicians, Two Ways to Play the Same Instrument
The trikitixa’s traditional playing style held essentially unchanged from its 19th-century arrival until the 1980s, when two musicians broke from it in different directions at the same time. Kepa Junkera, born in 1965, began his professional career in the early 1980s, working with the Basque folk group Oskorri from 1983 and releasing his first original recorded material in 1988. Joseba Tapia developed his own, separately distinct approach in the same period. Both were criticized by traditionalists for the liberties they took with an instrument that had barely changed in a century, and both were vindicated by the outcome: traditional and modern trikitixa now exist as two consolidated, parallel schools rather than one style replacing the other.
The revival had institutional backing behind it, too. A national championship, the trikitixa txapelketa, names a Basque champion team roughly every two to three years, and its documented history runs back to at least 1979, meaning the competitive structure predates the Junkera and Tapia era rather than following from it. Basque towns began sponsoring dedicated trikitixa festivals alongside the championship, and teaching has followed the same trajectory: conservatories and local schools now train new players, keeping a once-dying rural instrument in active circulation two generations after its lowest point.
The One Place Trikitixa Actually Shows Up at San Fermín
It would overstate the case to call the trikitixa a San Fermín tradition on the level of the txistu and gaita processions that open the festival every morning. It is not woven into the encierro or its ceremonies at all. What it does have is one specific, documented slot: at San Fermín’s midday Euskal Musika concert series in Media Luna park, the txistu shares the 12:30 PM bill with the trikitixa and improvised sung verse from bertsolaris. That single, factual booking is the extent of the trikitixa’s real connection to the festival, and it is worth stating precisely rather than dressing it up as something bigger. If you want to hear the instrument during Sanfermines rather than simply read about it, that midday program at Media Luna is where it is scheduled to appear.
Frequently Asked Questions
How old is the trikitixa?
The trikitixa’s first documented appearance dates to 1889, when historian Juan Carlos Guerra recorded a new diatonic accordion at the Urkiola pilgrimage festival in Bizkaia. That makes it roughly contemporary with the Eiffel Tower rather than an ancient instrument, despite its strong association with Basque cultural identity today.
Is trikitixa Basque or Spanish?
Trikitixa is a Basque instrument and a Basque word, used the same way in Spanish-language descriptions since there is no separate Spanish translation for it. The shorter form “trikiti” is the standard Basque spelling and is often used interchangeably with “trikitixa,” the dialectal Bizkaian form, in both Basque and Spanish contexts.
What is the difference between trikiti and trikitixa?
Trikiti is the standard Basque spelling and trikitixa is the dialectal form used in Bizkaia; both refer to the same two-row diatonic button accordion. The two terms are used interchangeably in practice, and neither is considered more correct than the other, they simply reflect different regional pronunciations of the same word.
Who revived the trikitixa in the 1980s?
Musicians Kepa Junkera and Joseba Tapia are credited with breaking from the trikitixa’s unchanged traditional playing style in the 1980s, each developing distinct new approaches that were controversial at the time but became established. Traditional and modern trikitixa now exist side by side as two separate, consolidated styles rather than one having replaced the other.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.