R.·.L.·.ALTUNA HISTORY

Our R.·.L.·.Altuna, number 52 is part of the Spanish Great Symbolic Lodge. It began to work in 2001, following the tradition of a former lodge which had the same name. The former lodge which was called R L Altuna number 15 worked in San Sebastian (Donostia) between 1932 and 1936. In 1936, the lodge was abruptly closed by the national troups  which uprose against the Republican legislation. Therefore, we are named after the former lodge .

If you want to know more about Altuna number 15, we advise you to read the book "Los masones" written by Francisco Rodríguez de Coro, published in 1992 by the Fundación Sancho el Sabio de Vitoria (945-1478) . It is about the history of Basque Freemasonry at the South of the frontier.

It seems that the lodge name « Altuna » came from the name of Manuel Ignacio Altuna y Portu (1722-62), a famous learned man who was born in the Portu palace in Azcoitia. He was the cofounder of the Real Sociedad Bascongada de Amigos del País as well as of the Compañía Guipuzcoana in Caracas. He was a friend of Rousseau.

The first lodge Altuna, nº 15 from the Great Spanish Orient of that times, seeing that the Spanish political situation was becoming stranger and stranger, in February 1933 asked the Respectable Lodge « La Zélée » in Bayonne, which still exists nowadays, to create a common international lodge « in which brothers from both democracy would work in order to bring together both peoples, talk about the most important problems so as to unify instead of dividing ».

The new common lodge was then created under the auspices of the Great Orient of France and was called « Spartacus », the brave gladiator from Capua who tried to break the chains of the slaves of his time and who managed to put the proud power of Rome into a bad spot for many years,

In 1935 The R.·.L.·.Spartacus, which was officially based in Hendaye, was composed of more than seventy brothers from both side of the border. It had been led by members from the lodges « La Zélée », « L'Etoile du Labourd » and « Altuna ». The experience came to an end when the Franquist troops arrived in San Sebastian in September 1936. The lodge of « La Zélée » in Bayonne was used to admit the Spanish refuges whether they were freemasons or not.