In 1452, Bizkaians assembled at the Oak of Gernika and approved the Fuero Viejo de Bizkaia (the Old Law of Bizkaia) one of Europe's most important yet little known medieval legal codes. Its laws encompassed an extraordinary range of individual and collective liberties, anticipating the 18th-century Declarations of Rights contained in the constitutions of the U.S. and France. It was extraordinarily "modern" in both spirit and letter and attracted the attention and admiration of John Adams and William Wordsworth. Its influence survives to the present day, underpinning Bizkaian and Basque claims to their own political identity within the Spanish state. Distributed for the Center for Basque Studies.