With the fall of Bilbao in June 1937, Sabin Etxea will be confiscated by the Francoist regime and converted into Falangist and Social Assistance headquarters.

Many nationalists felt that the occupation of the house in which Sabino Arana Goiri discovered the national Basque conscience was a desecration. Benanzio, a veteran nationalist militant, commented with a certain wit in regard to the emblems on Sabin Etxea that with the yoke they subjugated the will of our people and with the arrows they wounded their hearts.

If the political and social repression exercised by Francoism was brutal, no less so was the cultural repression. With the repression of Euskera, Basque folklore, Basque history, and Basque costumes, the regime was attacking one of the basic pillars of a nation: its culture. For a people without their own culture, like a tree without roots, is doomed to extinction.

The occupation of the house in which Sabino Arana had been born would have to be seen within the framework of a repressive strategy aimed at purifying every trace, every element, of Basque nationalism. It was sought to replace our indigenous culture with the alien Spanish culture.

We do not have a record of the activities of the Falangists in the "blue house", thus named by certain persons in allusion to the colour of their uniforms. We know only that the female section in charge of social assistance established a centre for children's nutrition.

Also, we recently determined that in the basements of Sabin Etxea there was deposited, next to other furnishings, a balcony that apparently had come loose from one of the walls of the building. In early 1949 they decide to renovate the interior of the house. Markos Etxebarria Uriarte, a nationalist who saw with sadness what they had turned Sabin Etxea into, Sabin Etxea that belonged to all nationalists, manages through a known contractor to retrieve the balcony.

From there on it was in his farmhouse in Sondika, where he preserved it as a true relic. It was, of course, something that he had to keep secret, since otherwise there would have been grave consequences for those involved.

Following the serious floods of August 1983, the farmhouse would suffer major damage. Being municipal property, it is repaired by the Town Hall of Sondika. It is at that moment that the provenance of the historic balcony becomes known.