during his undergraduacy he attended language courses wherever they were offered , mainly in safe conservative cities such as salamanca , burgos or valladolid , but for his phd thesis he struck out on his own and chose to make an examination of the mutual pronunciational influences of spanish and basque in the province of vizcaya , a contentious topic in francoist spain as basque was proscribed in public and not considered by state authorities to be a respectable language .