'Dancing in the Basque Country' homage to Matt Harding's YouTube video

Inspired by an original idea thought up by Matt Harding, Iñaki Goikoetxea spent 21 months producing his tribute to the original video, appropriately titled "Dancing in the Basque Country". In the video, the young Gipuzkoan can be seen dancing the same moves in 100 different locations around the Basque Country, Navarre and Iparralde, all with the aim of spreading the image of ''Euskal Herria'' on the internet. Says Iñaki "you don''t need to go to the other side of the world to see incredible places".

Iñaki Goikoetxea, who has previously produced similar projects for publication on YouTube, says "Dancing in the Basque Country" tops them all: "Sometimes it was a little embarrassing having to dance in the middle of the street, but everyone who took part, my friends, my family, knew why we were doing it and we had fun," he says.

Apart from recording the images, Goikoetxea is also responsible for the video''s soundtrack: "We recorded the music in a tiny studio which we can be seen playing live in one of the images. In total in took me about a month to edit the whole thing".

Iñaki Goikoetxea''s plan was to show off the Basque Country''s most impressive locations - the mountains, cities, fiestas, and so on: "I wanted to show all the places I discovered when I was little. People might think we went there just to dance, but in fact we move around a lot so I used the opportunity to record the images," he points out.

Recording in public places rarely posed a problem for Goikoetxea. In fact, on the odd occasion he was spontaneously joined by members of the public: "It was lovely when we were filming in Hondarribia and a wedding couple who were having their photos taken came and joined us".

Predecessors

Iñaki Goikoetxea is not the only Basque to be inspired by Matt Harding. A few months ago a girl from Biscay had a similar idea when she launched the video "Bizkaia Dubi Dubi", in which she aimed to highlight her favourite places in Biscay.

Matt Harding, meanwhile, has been making this type of video since 2005. After years working in the videogames industry in Australia, he went on a round-the-world trip where he would ask passers-by to film him dancing in front of famous monuments. Just one of those videos, published on the web, shot Matt to fame. His films are now the most watched and downloaded in the history of YouTube.