Hala Bedi IrratiaHala Bedi Irratia

Hala Bedi went on air in Gasteiz in August 1983, in the middle of the free-radio wave that swept the Basque Country that decade. The first transmission did not go to plan: police picked up one of the collaborators while it was going out, so the gear moved to a flat nearby and the broadcasts ran from there over the days that followed, on an antenna the group had built themselves. It has been assembly-run ever since, and it still puts out almost everything in Basque, as it did then.

The current grid carries ninety-odd volunteer programmes, and music is the biggest of its four strands: thirty-six shows against thirty-two social, twenty-one cultural and four magazines. La Tanguería takes tango, La Conquista del Punk the punk, Electrónica Social the machines and Xperimental Sound System the far edge. Everything goes out under Creative Commons.