Juan Antonio Iza(ga)-Zamácola Ocerin was born in Dima (Biscay) on 26 March 1758 as one of nine children, two of whom were priests and three were royal notaries. The Izaga-Zamácola family (or Iza-Zamácola in its abbreviated form) had its roots in Dima, and was a representative of the gentry of the coastal areas of the Basque Country (Biscay and Gipuzkoa).

Zamácola moved to Madrid in 1775, where he obtained a post as a royal notary in 1783 and made a name for himself as a guitarist and dancer, ridiculing exotic fashions. He took part in the War of the Convention against the French republicans (1793-95) at the head of the troops from Dima. In 1795 he began his collaboration with the Madrid daily newspaper Diario de Madrid using the pseudonym Don Preciso; he published satirical books as well as the Colección de las mejores coplas de seguidillas, tiranas y polos para cantar a la guitarra (“Collection of the best ballads, stanzas, songs and Andalusian dances to be sung to the guitar”; 1799, 1803). His wish to re-establish “national music” in Spain (i.e. music with popular roots) made him a precursor of Spanish folk-music scholarship. He was also interested in fashion and published El libro de moda en la feria (“The book of festive fashion”). In 1804 his idea to start a newspaper, El centinela de las costumbres (“The sentry of manners and customs”), failed under a general ban on new periodicals. In his professional capacity as a lawyer he published Tribunales de España: Práctica de los juzgados del reino (“Tribunals of Spain: Practice of the kingdom’s law courts”, 1806).

When Joseph Bonaparte was appointed king of Spain in 1808, Zamácola continued to work as a functionary and actively collaborated with the new regime. Consequently, he was forced into exile in 1814 and settled in Auch. There, he published a three-volume Historia de las naciones Bascas de una y otra parte del Pirineo septentrional y costas del mar Cantábrico desde sus primeros pobladores hasta nuestros días. Con la descripción, carácter, fueros, usos, costumbres, y leyes de cada uno de los estados Bascos que hoy existen (1818, “History of the Basque nations on both sides of the Northern Pyrenees and the Cantabrian coastlands, from the first inhabitants until the present. With the description, character, fueros, uses, customs and laws of all the Basque states that exist today”).

During the re-establishment of the liberal constitution in 1820 he returned to Bilbao, where he took part in the publication of a newspaper and published his last work in 1822, a eulogy to the Basque language: Perfecciones analíticas de la lengua bascongada e imitación del sistema adoptado por el célebre ideologista Don Pablo de Astarloa en sus admirables «Discursos filosóficos sobre la primitiva lengua» (“Analytical perfections of the Basque language in imitation of the system adopted by the celebrated Pablo de Astarloa in his admirable «Philosophical discourses on the primitive tongue»”).

“The history of the Basque nations” (1818) served as a reference and as an inspiration for Sabino Arana’s narrative of Basque nationalism, and was praised in Arana’s Bizkaya por su independencia (1892). In 1898 the work was republished by Amorrortu, the influential activist printer of first-wave Basque nationalist works.

In the historical-juridical debate over the Basque fueros (one side deriving them from a royal grant and thus subsidiary under the powers of the Crown, the other regarding them as a contract between the Crown and self-governing assemblies), Zamácola proposed a new departure emphasizing “popular history”. In his case this referred to the “Basque nations”, a view echoing that of the Enlightenment-Patriotic Royal Basque Society of Friends of the Country (Real Sociedad Bascongada de los Amigos del País, RSBAP), which in 1764 had begun to use the term nación bascongada, the “national history” of the Basque provinces, and the concept “nation” to refer to those Basque provinces. (In the French part of the Basque Country, the reference was rather to a collectivity of “the Basques”, without the term “nation”). Zamácola appealed to the ethnic unity of all Basques; his reliance on territory and language reflects the emergence of a new, more nationalist attitude. He defends the Basque institutions as an example of the survival of “primitive laws and customs”, and argues that “the civilized nations of Europe” are beginning to acknowledge the need to reinvigorate native-vernacular systems of government. His work combines classical references (ancient Greece and its coexisting constitutional systems), representative organs of popular power, Enlightenment values such as popular sovereignty, and also Romantic notions such as cultural nativism (as regards language and traditional social organization) and a belief in national characters. He also echoes the traditional myths: of primitive monotheism, independence from the Romans, Basque Iberism, and universal noble status based on tax exemption. He also sees parallels between the Basques provinces and the Swiss cantons. His work on the whole fed the “liberal” strand in the emerging Basque historical consciousness.