Our last week in Bilbao, towards the end of June, brought midsummer celebrations. On June 23rd, the Noche de San Juan (St John’s Night) is celebrated with after-dark bonfires on beaches and hilltops throughout the Basque Country, and the usual standing around talking and drinking till the early hours of the night. A few days earlier, Bilbao’s ‘Noche Blanca’ (White Night), took place, another midsummer celebration of light. There was lots of music, dance, etc., around town – but the highlight was the gaudily illuminated buildings around the city:

We left Bilbao on June 26th. On the evening before our departure, about 15 of Pietro’s colleagues gave us a rousing farewell amidst the empty shelves and packed suitcases in our flat. Next morning, we left a little tearfully on the 8am train from Atxuri Station, and went all the way back home on the train in one day, through San Sebastian, Paris and London, arriving at our little house in East Oxford at 1am.

Within a few hours of getting back, it felt as if we had never been away, but rather had experienced our year in Bilbao in a weird time warp which is in some sense still going on somewhere in another dimension. This is what happens when you go away for a year and come back to a house, a street, a city which have apparently not changed at all, and in which people’s lives (including one’s own) have apparently not changed at all, despite all the extraordinary things you’ve experienced in the intervening time.

It’s great to be home, but leaving Bilbao feels a bit like a bereavement too.  I’ve been keeping the experience artificially alive by continuing to write this blog for a couple of months after our return, but I’ve said most of what I wanted to say now, and it’s time to bring it to a final full stop.

Thanks for reading.  I leave you with  (i) a little 6-minute film that takes you all around the Basque Country and encapsulates the varied landscapes and some of the spirit of the place...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzutvz-eExo

and (ii) a final miscellany of previously un-posted shots of Bilbao.

Agur, Bilbo!  Bye bye, Bilbao!

Keeping Watch by the River

Our weekend trip to Barcelona was a year ago, last September, a few weeks after we had arrived in Bilbao. Somehow I never quite got round to blogging about it then as there were so many things to say about Bilbao at the time. So I’m only getting round to it now in my penultimate post. Perhaps this is what’s called leaving the best till last.

It’s a slow six-hour train ride from Atlantic Bilbao to Mediterranean Barcelona. Things speed up a little once one has crossed the Cantabrian mountains out of the Basque Country and descended into the stunning green Ebro valley of La Rioja. Then there’s the strange grey-brown desert of the area around Zaragoza, and finally into the different, Mediterranean green of Catalunya.

We’d never been to Barcelona before – but we really fell in love with it, with its enticing combination of rich cultural life, extraordinary history, wonderful architectural heritage, Mediterranean climate (warm, warm, warm), fantastic setting (a seaside city with acres of beautiful beach, and mountains behind the city) and great food.

Not that we saw that much of the city, however. We stayed for one night only in a flat in the medieval old town (the ‘Ciutat Vella’) – in the area of Sant Pere, which is on the edge of the ‘Barri Gotic’, the very centre of the city. In a day and a half, we didn’t have time to do more than explore the (extensive) old town and the old port (‘Port Vell’), and wander along the nearby beaches of Barceloneta. But we saw enough to feel certain that this is a place we’d like to spend a lot more time in.

The Ciutat Vella has its touristy centre, of course, especially around the cathedral and the Picasso Museum, but Sant Pere, the area we were staying in, was a slice of authentic old town life, with its narrow medieval streets and a North African and Middle Eastern feel:

Sant Pere is also the location of the Palau de la Musica Catalana, the glorious art nouveau (‘modernista’) concert hall with its extraordinary ceramic decorations inside and outside. One of the highlights of the weekend was a visit here to see a brilliant evening of flamenco:

The ancient core of the old town, the Barri Gotic, stretches back to Roman times:

Within the remains of the Roman walls are the medieval cathedral and royal palace (in which is contained the excellent Museum of the History of Barcelona):

… and the ancient governmental heart of the city, the Placa de Sant Jaume, where the ceremonial buildings of the Catalan Government are still located:

Beyond the Roman core, the old town has two great medieval churches – Santa Maria del Pi near the centre:

… and Santa Maria del Mar in the southern area near the sea, ‘La Ribera’:

North of La Ribera is the atmospheric area of Santa Caterina, with its splendidly rebuilt medieval market:

The pickpocket-infested tourist-trap avenue ‘Las Ramblas’ runs between the Barrio Gotic and the western area of ‘El Raval’, quite down-at-heel in places. Here there is the huge food market, ‘La Boqueria’:

… and the delightful old medieval hospital of Santa Creu which is now the Library of Catalunya:

By the sea is the harbour and the old shipping area, Port Vell, with its famous statute of Christopher Columbus and its complex of medieval shipyards:

There’s also the ‘Palau del Mar’, now the Museum of the History of Catalunya, and the beaches of Barceloneta:

Back in the heart of the Barrio Gotic, there’s the old Jewish area, known as ‘El Call’, with a recently discovered medieval synagogue:

And the charming Placa de Sant Felip Neri:

With more time, we could have gone beyond the Ciutat Vella to see the Gaudi buildings (including the ‘Sagrada Familia’) in the 19th century new town (‘L’Eixample’); the complex of national art galleries, museums and parks in the Montjuic area on the hill above the medieval city; the Olympic village along the coast from Barceloneta; and so on. Or we could have ventured into the Catalunyan mountains beyond the city to see the many medieval towns, castles and monasteries to be found there.

We will definitely be back.

The Biscay coast (stretching from Galicia in the West through Asturias, Cantabria and the Spanish and French Basque Country) contains some of the most remarkable Stone Age treasures in Europe. The most famous are the cave paintings in Lascaux in the French Basque Country, and at Altamira in Cantabria. There are plenty of similar smaller sites in the Spanish Basque Country, the most notable being Santimamine near Gernika. We didn´t actually manage to visit Santimamine, but we did get to Altamira on our weekend trip to Cantabria – and it was a very memorable trip.

Rediscovered in the 19th century after the caves collapsed in the late stone age, the paintings at Altamira were the very first stone age paintings to be found in modern times, and there was enormous scepticism about them at first: people simply didn't believe such extraordinary paintings could be so old.

Nowadays, you can’t actually go into the caves at Altamira (except by special arrangement), since the environment is too delicate to sustain the massive numbers of tourists. The caves were shut to the general public in the 1970. In 2001 a superb life-size fibreglass replica of the caves and all the paintings within was opened:

It was the first time I’d seen Stone Age cave paintings in situ. I was amazed at their richness and the sheer number and extent of them. I was also fascinated to see that the artists were, in many places, actually using the shape of the rock to guide their painting – either using a natural undulation in the cave surface as a kind of ‘boss’, a panel on which to paint, or using the contour of the rock to echo the shape of the thing they were painting:

The interpretation centre built around the caves at Altamira is outstanding, and I was sorry I couldn’t spend more time there. Absolutely up-to-the-minute in terms of the quality of graphic and audio-visual design, it really helped one to understand the kind of society which produced these paintings. So many archaeological displays don’t really explain what those rather dull pieces of bone and clay actually are and what they actually did and how they were actually made, but this one really brings it all to life.

The exhibition is particularly illuminating about the paintings themselves, showing how the paintings were made, as well as speculating on their functions, and illustrating the far-reaching influence of the discoveries of these ancient art works on modern art: Picasso is quoted as saying: ‘After Altamira, everything is decadence.’

Learning about how the paintings were made was perhaps the most interesting bit. I had little idea how sophisticated the techniques used were – not only using the contours of the rock but also engraving the outlines and major details of the figures before painting them in using different pigments and a variety of ‘smudging’ techniques to express movement, light and shade etc. Paint was applied using fingers, fur rags, and sometimes even airbrushing – blowing paint through tubes made from birds’ bones – depending on what effect was required. (Pictures below from the internet).

An equal sophistication is apparent in the surviving artefacts made by these people, left behind when they abandoned the cave for unknown reasons 14,000 years ago – tools such as harpoons and needles, and pendants and other decorative adornments, finely carved from bone and antler as well as stone – and in the techniques they used to turn animals into clothes and food, and so on, e.g. tanning and roasting with herbs. The exhibition draws parallels between this culture and the hunter-gatherer lifestyles of some modern eskimos, aborigines etc.

In fact, one of the revelations of this museum was a sense of how recent these paintings are, relatively speaking, and of the relative continuity between them and modernity, something I’d never quite sensed before. If you’re anything like me, you probably have incredibly little grasp of the chronology of things in the very distant past, before the Greeks and Romans, say. Just how long ago were they? This museum really helped me to grasp the relative time scales concerned. The paintings at Altamira are between 18,000 and 14,000 years old, dating from the last centuries of the Palaeolithic world of hunter-gathering before the Neolithic world of agriculture began around 10,000 years ago – not so long when you think that the late Stone Age (Stonehenge etc.) and the start of the Bronze Age in the near East was only about 5,000 years ago, and the Anglo-Saxons 1,500 years ago.

The museum was also excellent on explaining the archaeology of the caves, and the extraordinary events of the nineteenth century which led to the discovery and interpretation of these works of art which forced a revolution in understanding of history and culture.

We had to do more wrestling with the chronology of the distant past at another exceptionally interesting museum we went to, in Burgos a few weeks later. This was the new Museum of Human Evolution, built as an interpretation centre for the extraordinary Stone Age finds (of 1994) from the nearby archaeological site of Atapuerca 15 miles away. Again, the museum contains outstanding recreations of the caves and the environment of the caves as an aid to understanding their history and archaeology. (Trips can also be made to the excavations at Atapuerca, which are still ongoing.)

Considered some of the most important archaeological finds ever made, the caves at Atapuerca don’t contain paintings, but the remains of the oldest hominids ever found in Europe – the ‘homo antecessor’ of 900,000 years ago – as well as later species such as ‘homo heidelbergensis’ (400,000 years ago).  It’s believed that ‘homo antecessor’ might be the common ancestor of both ‘homo sapiens’ and ‘homo neanderthalis’.

The museum itself, again extremely impressive in terms of its graphic and audio-visual display, and the clarity of its narrative, is a kind of mixture of archaeology, history and science, exploring not only the archaeology of the finds themselves but also setting them in the context of the science of evolution and the history of discoveries about evolution:

Here, one’s sense of time is stretched in a different way. Whereas at Altamira, one realises how recent the late Stone Age was, at Atapuerca one realises how long the Stone Age was, and how long ago the early Stone Age was. The first ‘homo’ is reckoned to be around 2.5 million years ago, whilst ‘homo sapiens’ originated only around 200,000 years ago. Here at Atapuerca we have the hominids of almost 1 million years ago; at Altamira, the stone age art of only 14,000 years ago.

Historically a relatively poor, rural place without any major centres of power or wealth (until the industrial revolution), the Basque country does not contain the plethora of fantastic early and late medieval remains that other areas of Spain do (such as Castile and Catalunya). Nevertheless, it has its share of medieval treasures of various sorts, and some really excellent archaeological museums to see them in.

Whichever of the museums you visit, one of the first things you’ll see will be the ancient steles (memorial stones, ‘hilarri’ in Basque) which are common throughout the Basque Country. And not just any old steles: the Basques specialised in very characteristic discoidal steles. (Despite ‘stele’ being a common archaeological term, it took us a while to get used to it, by which time we were habitually referring to these things as ‘discoidal what-nots’.)

Many of the discoidal what-nots – I mean ‘steles’ – date from pre-Christian times (the Basques converted to Christianity rather late) and the oldest ones (such as those in the 9th century pre-Christian graveyard at Argieta near the little town of Elorrio) are decorated with distinctively Basque pagan symbols, often including the sun and stars. (Although I went to Elorrio, I didn't manage to get to this graveyard, so these pictures are from the internet).

Many modern Basque gravestones are still in the form of discoidal steles with Christian and traditional Basque symbols. These are in the moderen graveyard at the old Romanesque church above San Juan de Gaztalugatze.

Another very distinctively Basque object you’ll find in these museums is the ‘argizaiola’ (‘waxboard’), a carved wooden board around which a long wax taper is wound. This ancient device is a type of funeral candle designed to give the dead person light in their new world of darkness. The candle was traditionally lit in the hearth of the person’s homestead (‘etxea’) and taken to the grave at the church. The argizaiola is still lit today at funerals and on memorial occasions. (I didn't manage to get any good pictures of these, so these are from the internet).

As a starting point for an exploration of medieval Basque history and culture (and pre- and post-medieval too), six museums are very useful: the wonderful San Telmo Museum in San Sebastian, the excellent Archaeology Museums in Bilbao and Vitoria, and the Basque Museums in Bilbao, Gernika and Bayonne.

The San Telmo Museum in San Sebastian, in the old San Telmo convent, recently redesigned with all mod cons, is highly recommended for its beautifully displayed survey of Basque archaeology, history and art:

The Archaeology Museums in Bilbao and Vitoria are similarly very well displayed, and set in interesting contemporary buildings with great use of graphic and audio-visual display. Vitoria’s is in a handsome modern annexe to an old Renaissance palazzo...

… whilst Bilbao’s is in a new building on Plaza Unamuno, with beautiful alabaster windows which shed a pretty, muted light on the ancient objects.

Like the San Telmo Museum, the Basque Museums in Bayonne and in Gernika contain an overview of Basque archaeology, history and art; again both are modernised and very well designed, both in large old Basque town houses.

The Basque Museum (Euskal Museoa) in Bilbao is less impressive, but nevertheless well worth a visit. It contains a number of significant treasures, including perhaps the most important archaeological object in the Basque Country, an Iron Age (around 3rd century BC) zoomorphic sculpture, known as the ‘Mikeldi Idol’ (after the place where it was found in the 17th century).

The most wonderful thing in this museum – indeed one of the most wonderful things I’ve seen in any museum anywhere – is a HUGE handmade topographical model of Bizkaia (the region around Bilbao) – a massive 3D map of the whole area, assembled from tiny pieces of wood. A remarkable thing, and quite mesmerising to look at, especially when you actually know the area:

At the end of my last post, I published the link to a beautiful little film of Basque dancing in the mountains, but I got the link wrong, os here's the correct one. It's only 4 minutes long. Do look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-UhSAJBm9E

This post is interspersed with pictures I took at the daily Basque Folk Dance performances in Plaza Nueva last August during the Fiesta.

In Britain, the educated classes like to make fun of folk dance, and most other people don’t really register its existence. Morris dancing is a national joke, despite being an ancient and valuable part of our culture, very elegant when done well, and sometimes accompanied by brilliantly played fiddle and accordion music.

There’s not so much snobbery in the Basque Country, where folk dance is a popular, dynamic and sophisticated phenomenon and an integral part of most Basque communities. We saw lots of it during our year in Bilbao, without  having to try very hard. Its popularity has grown with the post-Franco Basque revival, but it has never suffered the kind of dismal decline that has befallen Morris dancing, and it is dynamic and strong in every Basque community. It’s both a central part of religious and secular festivals (fiestas), and, in its more informal manifestations, a very popular social activity.

In fact, although Basque country dance is very different from Morris dancing in many respects, the two forms do have similarities, and what I’ve read suggests that they are likely to have the same origins. Although there are few facts on the ground about these origins, a theory that appears to be taken very seriously is that the origins are at least partly Moorish – a likely etymology for the word ‘Morris’ (connected also with the name of the medieval dance the ‘Moresca’), and anthropologists have pointed out many similarities in the physical and symbolic aspects of Basque and Morris dancing, as well as relationships with the world of medieval mummers' plays and so on.

Basque dance, however, has a much more complex and varied culture of dances and pageants associated with religious and secular fiestas. These contain a far more balletic, virtuosic element than Morris dancing that is sometimes quite spectacular and extremely skilful.

Basque folk dance is still mainly practised by people from the towns and villages rather than the big cities. One is immediately struck by the youth, vitality and skill of many of the dancers. Like so many aspects of Basque folk culture – verse, music, rowing, etc. – this is something that engages many young people, and that demands a huge amount of skill and practice. Just as every town around the Basque country produces its highly skilled rowing teams and folk music bands, every town produces highly skilled troupes of dancers from amongst its own population.

There are many different types of dance. Some are simple, relatively informal social dances; some are more complex, more formal dances. Of the latter, some have a dramatic or narrative element, and many of the dances are particular to a specific town and event. Some dances exist purely as dances, others are part of more extended pageants that take place on specific occasions. In many of the dances, props like swords, bows, and colourful canes are used. There are dances that are done on tables, dances that involve jumping on wine glasses, etc. etc.

In many of the traditional dances, men have the most interesting roles to play, performing a traditional ’display’ function – showing off their strength, muscularity and elegance to the women.   Whilst clearly this reflects the patriarchy of the past, it’s also extraordinary to see a society where so many men are so engaged with dance.

At the heart of Basque country dancing are a series of distinctive leg moves: like Irish country dance, the torso is kept very still, whilst the legs do most of the work. Unlike Irish dance, the arms are often held high. The high kick is the centrepiece, and one of the key moments where the dancers can show off their elegance and control. Two other important moves are (a) a kind of leg shake whereby one leg is held in the air with bent knee and the lower half is twirled, and (b) a foot twirl that involves jumping in the air and moving one’s two feet back and forth over each other whilst in the air.

Here are some photos from the internet that illustrate the leg kicks which are undoubtedly the most characteristic element of Basque dance:

And a few more pictures from the internet that capture some of the spirit and complexity of the dances perhaps better than I was able to:

Here’s a video of some stick dancing and maypole dancing in Plaza Nueva:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJNI_0vPKxU

And here’s a video of a classic example of simple male display dancing, outside the Teatro Arriaga: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bThmiCSbIuQ

And here’s a couple of videos of some simpler social dancing also in Plaza Nueva:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQbhkbZZnYA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky3NZq6tZ7M

This video gives a sense of the scale of the event and the huge numbers of dancers involved:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUrI6LCYxAo

Basque ethnographers and anthropologists have done a great deal of work on trying to unearth the origins and meanings of the 400 or so existing dances. One of the leading experts (and also a choreographer) is a man called Juan Antonio Urbeltz who is regarded as the great figure of the post-Franco folk dance revival. His analysis of the metaphorical significance of Basque sword-dances is here: www.nabasque.org/Pages/Articles/Urbeltz-carnival.htm.

At the Teatro Arriaga, we saw a performance of Urbeltz’s reconstruction of a medieval Corpus Christi pageant in which angels and devils fight it out. Very extraordinary, the piece was constructed from elements of ancient Corpus Christi (‘Besta Berri’ = ‘new festival’) pageants and dances from a number of Basque villages.  The pageants are a mixture of medieval and later elements so the costumes range from medieval religious to Napoleonic military in style. This website gives an idea of the complexity of the folklore that’s involved: http://www.ysursa.com/pages/Besta-berri.htm. In these pictures from the show (taken from the internet), you can see many of the classic features of Basque dance – the varied costumes and props, the elements of pageant, the typical leg moves, and so on.

And here’s a video of part of the show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQF7f57xJiU

Here are some pictures (taken from the internet) of actual Corpus Christi pageants in Basque towns and villages, complete with the characteristic bizarre hats worn by the dancers:

And here’s a video of one of them, where you can see some of the nifty footwork and splendid costumes:
http://www.dantzan.com/bideoak/http-media-dantzan-com-2009-06-14_besta-berri_ev-m2t.flv?b_start:int=193&-C=

To finish this post, here’s a lovely little video that communicates some of the Basque passion for dancing as well as showing off some of the beautiful landscape: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-UhSAJBm9E

[The end is in sight: 7 blog posts to go before I call it a day and say a final farewell to Bilbao…..]

Regular followers of the blog may remember that shortly after we arrived in Bilbao, I wrote an excited post about the phenomenon of the Bertsolariak – a very ancient Basque folk tradition of competitive improvised verse chanting originally done by shepherds, and now appropriated by students, literary types and others as part of the post-Franco Basque cultural revival.

This remains perhaps the most fascinating thing we’ve discovered here. Since the whole thing takes place in Euskara, our appreciation of it has obviously been somewhat limited, but we’ve learnt enough about it, and seen enough of it, to get a pretty good idea of what it involves and how extraordinary it is – helped by a great documentary about it (with English subtitles): ‘Bertsolari’ (www.bertsolarifilm.com).  It has been fascinating to see a place where a creative verse tradition has real value amongst young people. Although it is quite, quite different from rap, it is nevertheless similar in the way in which it offers young people a participatory way into word-crafting, and thus it has been of particular interest to me as an English teacher, especially since the teaching of poetry is one of my main research interests. (I have recently had a chapter published entitled ‘Exploring Resistance to Poetry in Advanced English Studies’  (Making Poetry Matter, Bloomsbury 2013, www.bloomsbury.com/uk/making-poetry-matter-9781441101471) – and the phenomenon of Bertsolarism resonates clearly with some of the issues I raise there.)

Anyway, that post was meant to be the first of a series of three on Basque folk culture – verse, music and dance. I have been putting off writing the other two because there’s so much to say about them and I wanted to learn more about them, but now I have come to the last weeks of this blog and I can put it off no longer. So here goes. Folk music....

Basque folk music has been our constant companion throughout the year in Bilbao. Barely a day has gone past without some great folk music happening on the street outside our flat. In this respect, we’re lucky to have lived on two of the most ‘happening’ streets in Bilbao, but anywhere in the old town one is likely to hear live folk music regularly – and wherever you go in the Basque country, folk music is an integral part of community life, with a particular role in the fiestas, parades and dances that feature so strongly in cultural life here. And it’s not just an activity for older people: it’s thriving amongst the young, too, both in its traditional forms and in the way it has inflected various forms of contemporary popular music.

Difficult to sum up what Basque folk music is like. It has, of course, many of the generic elements of European folk music – and certainly some of it contains things that are similar to the Celtic tradition (although the Basques are not at all Celtic). But it also has elements that are very distinctive. Like most folk music cultures it is very heterogeneous, too, with very different types of music and different instrumental combinations for different cultural contexts, and with different strands of development. Some styles, for instance, sound a little more ‘Celtic mainstream’ whilst others sound more exotically Basque. And then there are the differences between marching music, dance music, song and so on.

Any account of Basque folk music should probably start with the ‘txistu’, the Basque pipe played by a ‘txistulari’ – a piper. The txistu is heard in a variety of contexts, but perhaps the most common is in marching bands with drums. The txistu is played with just one hand, whilst the other hand is used for drumming.

Rather like Celtic pipe and drum bands, a lot of Basque txistu music nevertheless sometimes has quite a distinctive feel with some strange melodic and harmonic twists. Txistu bands can be seen wandering the streets of the old town most weekends and sometimes during the week too. Here’s a video of a typical band playing while wandering the streets: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOn8bnDDWCU. And here are a couple of the many  txistu bands we saw around town:

The txistu has a special place in Basque music as it is mostly played in the context of ceremonial events and formal folk dance. In the realm of more informal folk music, for dancing or listening, the most popular Basque folk instrument is the ‘trikitixa’ – the Basque accordion, which became popular only in the 19th century but is now a central part of Basque musical culture. Highly virtuosic accordionists are accorded the kind of celebrity status that is perhaps more often accorded to fiddle players in the Celtic tradition. Here’s a video of the trikitixa being played solo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLhsBsbyT94

We’ve also often seen the trikitixa being played with two more ancient Basque instruments – the tambourine and the ‘alboka’ – in a more medieval-sounding style of folk music.  The ‘alboka’ is an animal horn equipped with a reed (a hornpipe, in fact), and with a wooden handle inserted into the middle of the horn.

Here’s a great video of the alboka being played: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJt9MHt0TJo. And here's an alboka player we saw in the Casco Viejo one day:

Two ancient rural styles which one is less likely to come across in town are the ‘txalaparta’ and the ‘irrintzi’. The ‘txalaparta’ is a percussion instrument – a sort of cross between wood blocks and a xylophone, played by dropping wooden sticks onto wooden planks.

We’ve seen this played in the streets and at festivals a few times. A good video is here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=505x6YgAgyc. And  here are some players who appeared outside our flat one day:

The ‘irrintzi’ is the Basque yodel. We’ve often had cause to make the comparison between the Basque Country and Switzerland – similarly densely wooded, mountainous terrain (although the Basque Country doesn’t have anything as high as the Alps) with similar chalet-style mountain houses built for a similar climate, etc. And it turns out that one of the similarities is the existence of a mountain yodelling tradition. There’s an amazing performance in this documentary clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcSaW6JUnUc. And here’s one at an irrintzi competition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_BTzGHu-QY

And then there’s singing. There is a plentiful supply of Basque folk songs and ballads (some ancient, some modern) and Basques love singing, often bursting into song in the streets outside the bars. There’s a very strong choral tradition. Very similar to the Welsh tradition, it tends now to be the preserve of older people, and one has the feeling it may be dying out in a way that the instrumental music isn’t. But there’s still plenty of it to be heard, and every couple of weeks we’ll be roused by the sound of a choir singing folk ballads in the street below, often extremely well.  Or sometimes it might be a group of Basque folk who are simply drinking together and decide to sing a song or two. Here’s a typical group of men singing in the street: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szbE19vUbEo.

And here's a choir we caught singing a concert of folk song in the portico of the cathedral one evening:

Whether it’s a choir, a txistu band, a trikitixa band, a brass band or a traditional folk band, these groups often wander the streets of the old town playing or singing, stopping at the occasional bar and entertaining the punters on the street before having a quick drink and moving on.

There are of course a number of celebrated Basque folk singers and players who have helped to promote folk music – and very importantly the Basque language – and keep it alive and thriving in the post-Franco years, and who have also taken it in new directions. Top of the list are Mikel Laboa, Benito Lertxundi, Joseba Tapia and Kepa Junkera.

Mikel Laboa (1924-2008) is seen as the father of the Basque folk revival – very much the Ewan McColl/Bob Dylan/Joan Baez of the Basque Country. Famous particularly for his song ‘Txoria txori’ (‘A bird is a bird’, covered at one point by Joan Baez), he sang with Bob Dylan at a concert for peace in San Sebastian shortly before he died. He performed classic folks songs, and his own folk compositions, as well as settings of poetry, and some more experimental music. He has a rather thin reedy voice, but some of his performances are extraordinary. Here’s a video of his most famous song ‘Txoria txori’, a song about freedom which almost has the status of a Basque anthem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NW7CZxOxhI. And here’s the Guardian’s obituary of Mike Laboa: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/dec/09/mikel-laboa-obituary

The most famous name of the next generation is Benito Lertxundi (born 1942) who we went to see giving a concert at the big concert hall, the Euskalduna Palace. Again, he sings both traditional songs and his own, and has played a particularly important role in promoting the Basque language and its old ballads. The concert was a strange experience, since all the songs were in Euskara and we couldn’t understand any of it. But it was clear that some of them were heart-warming reflections on the beauty of the Basque country, and/or contained nationalist Basque sentiment - and the audience (a packed hall) sang along to the most popular songs. Here is an atmospheric video of him with nice shots of the Basque Country: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4MPVgOljoo

And then there is the younger generation, many of whom have taken the music in interesting directions – sometimes quite political, sometimes combining Basque sounds with sounds of other cultures and traditions. The lead names here are Joseba Tapia and Kepa Junkera, both of whom perform in a variety of traditional and more contemporary styles. Both play the trikitixa: Joseba Tapia also sings. I particularly like Joseba Tapia; although we can understand almost nothing of the lyrics (and translations aren’t available), we can make out just enough to know that some of the songs are quite sharp, humorous and political. Unfortunately, we didn´t get a chance to see these two in concert, despite looking out for them. Here’s a good example of a Tapia song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHiDBu1KFGw.

And here’s a recording of Kepa Junkera playing on BBC Scotland: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMuzJyIwbUk

Other forms of folk and street music are popular too. At various times, we’ve heard South American and African music on the streets, and there are several superb street jazz bands, brass bands and drumming bands that have been regular visitors here. The fantastic Bandarra Street Orkestra have played in our street a couple of times. Here’s a video of them at a German street music festival: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfTUChJMT3E#at=68. And some pictures of them playing outside our flat:

Rock and pop music are, of course, also thriving in the Basque Country and there are many Basque bands of all kinds. The Basque Country, with its industrial hinterlands and tradition of left-wing protest, has a reputation as being the most progressive region of Spain in terms of contemporary pop music. If you want the latest in rap, reggae, grunge, etc. (rather than the blander Mediterranean pop which is popular throughout Spain and Italy), the Basque Country will have it. In the 80s, the Basque Country was the leader of Spanish punk with what is now known as ‘Basque Radical Rock.’

Finally, here’s a video of three very Basque young men playing in a very typical band with txistu, trikitixa and tambourine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWYFunYol24

Some months ago, I wrote several blog posts about food, but I thought I ought to revisit the topic one more time before I stop.  So here are a few fairly random musings about the things that have tickled our stomachs. (Many of the pictures below are taken from the internet.)

Tortillas and Empanadas

After my previous posts, I realised that I had written a lot about ‘pintxos’, but said nothing about two other very important foodstuffs with a similar snack function: ‘empanadas’ and ‘tortillas’ (spanish omelette).

Tortillas are omnipresent, sold in large quantities in every one of the thousands and thousands of bars and cafes in Spain, and the mouth-wateringly delicious food for every occasion. Fancy something savoury for breakfast instead of a pastry filled with custard? Have a slice of tortilla. Elevenses and still over 3 hours to go till lunch? Have a slice of tortilla. Want a quick light lunch instead of the usual three course extravaganza? Have a slice of tortilla. Teatime and still 5 hours to go till supper at 11pm? Have a slice of tortilla. Ate too much at lunch but need a little something before bed? Have a slice of tortilla. Going on a train journey and need something to sustain you on the way? Have a slice of tortilla. And so on.

Less common, but still popular, are empanadas. Mostly sold in bakeries, but also sometimes found on the counter in bars along with the tortillas and pintxos, they are a kind of flat baked pasty – two layers of pastry with a delicious filling of oniony meat, fish or cheese, made in big rounds like pizza and eaten in slices

The most wonderful empanadas in Bilbao are served at ‘Obrador de Jon’ (‘Jon´s workshop’) on Calle Ronda, on the other side of the old town near our first flat, a wonderful little friendly bakery and café which opened shortly after we arrived in Bilbao. Some of the empanadas there have amazing sweet and savoury fillings like ‘jamon y manzana’ (ham and apple) and ‘atun y pasos’ (tuna and raisins) – and others have sweet fillings like mango. Highly recommended.

After a winter of very good apples, pears and quinces, the summer brought a plethora of wonderful soft fruit. First, there was the strawberry season in May, then the (particularly good) cherry season in June, with the peach season just starting at the end of June. And it was all so cheap: we’d get through a couple of big boxes of cherries a week in June. Wonderful melons seem to be available all year too, as do walnuts, almonds and hazelnuts.

Fish

We’ve continued to enjoy eating simply cooked fresh fish ‘a la plancha’ (grilled) – often turbot (‘rodaballo’) or bream (‘dorada’)– both at home and out, and particularly in fishing towns along the coast, and much more cheaply than in the UK. The traditional way of cooking it is to grill it with some slices of garlic and lay it on top of buttery grilled or baked sliced potatoes.

Delicious. Fresh tuna has been another simple and wonderful pleasure, though it disappeared over the winter and only came back again in June. However, bottled tuna – far superior to the stuff you get in tins in the UK – was a useful replacement. (Tuna here is often referred to as Bonito del Nord - the beauty of the North. The man at our local 'charcuteria' was fond of telling us that the tuna we were buying was the second best in Bilbao: he himself was the best ('bonito' also meaning 'beautiful man.'))

Beans and Peppers

Other favourite staple foods to eat in and out include ‘alubias’ (bean stews, usually made with chorizo) and ‘pimientos de Gernika’ (or ‘pimientos del pais’), the wonderful little sweet green peppers, which one simply fries whole with garlic and salt: you can’t get them in the UK and we’re going to miss them hugely. There are also the lovely sweet red ‘piquillo’ peppers which you buy, cooked, in bottles.

Beans of many different kinds are a very popular staple here, and we ate lots of them at home. Grocers all have sacks of dried beans to dig into, whilst bottles of cooked beans are also omnipresent. Indeed, bottles of food are far more popular here than in the UK; beans, peppers, chillies, fish, onions, asparagus, etc. – bottles of all of these cram the shelves of every grocer.

Breakfast

Most weekends, we have gone out for breakfast on either Saturday or Sunday. Our nearest café, where we normally go, is the unpretentious but atmospheric and friendly little Café Bizvete opposite the cathedral. Other nearby alternatives include Café Santiago, Café Brasil, Café Exquisita and Café Lago (the latter particularly good for ‘chocolate con churros’.)

Breakfast consists of coffee – usually ‘café con leche’ – plus a sticky croissant or custardy thing, and a glass of orange juice. Custard  (‘natilla’) is extremely popular here, and typically the choice at breakfast, other than sticky croissant, might consist of custard tart, custard and apple tart, ´leche frita´(fried custard), ‘torrija’ (fried custardy bread), and something called ´gypsy’s arm’ (‘brazo de gitano’) which is like a swiss roll with custard instead of jam.

For breakfast at home, we relied on 'La Casa Del Yogur', a little Cantabrian dairy shop round the corner where we could get fresh milk, plain yoghourt and bottle stewed fruit purees. At the Fiesta de San Tomas, in December, we bought a bottle of bee pollen from a farm in the Basque mountains, largely out of curiosity, and ended up sprinkling a few grains of that on our yoghourt ad fruit each day!

Coffee

Coffee would be pretty straightforward, you’d think, especially since choices other than ‘café con leche’ or ‘café solo’ are unusual. But there was one puzzle we had to work out early on. When we ordered ‘café con leche’ it always came in a rather dull cup and saucer, whereas around us we saw most Basque people drinking it out of much more attractive, and bigger, glasses. Turns out that you have to ask for ‘café con leche en vaso’ if you want it in a glass - which is what most of the locals seem to do.

Cake

Cake, in the English sense, is not easy to come by at all, and even ‘tartas’ – delicious cake-like tarts – are not often sold in cafes, which generally sell pastries and savoury things instead: generally one has to buy ‘tartas’ from a ‘pasteleria’ to take away. One important exception, however, is ‘Obrador de Jon’ (again), which specialises in exquisite home-made ‘tartas’– their ‘tarta de Santiago’ is unmatched, and there is always a selection of mouth-wateringly moist almondy, fruity and chocolately ‘tortas’ to choose from. 

Horchata

Ever come across ‘horchata’ before? I hadn’t. It’s a popular sweet cold drink made with water, tiger nuts (‘chufas’) and sugar – an ancient drink dating from the time of the Muslim occupation of Spain, and very refreshing. And what exactly are tiger nuts? Well, it turns out that they are not nuts at all, but the tubers of a kind of sedge grass! Horchata tastes and looks a bit like you might imagine a nutty milkshake to taste and look, but there’s no milk in it.

Pintxos

Pintxos continued to be a delight, and a regular default for a cheap, light and very tasty supper if we didn’t feel like cooking. We often headed for the bars ‘Irrintzi’, ‘Kukusoak’,  and  ‘Xukela’, all approximately one minute walk from our flat, and all serving delicious things. Irrintzi is one of the best, with some quite avant-garde pintxos, and by far the best selection of vegetarian pintxos in Bilbao. Not far away, in Plaza Nueva, there is a plethora of pintxo bars, mostly very good. ‘Café Bar Bilbao’ is always a good starting point, traditional but lively. ‘Victor Montes’ is a bit more staid, more traditional and more expensive, but full of old-fashioned character. A little further away still, in the new town (‘ensanche’), the streets around the Diputacion Foral de Bizkaia (county hall) contain some great treats, especially the wonderful ‘Vino del Ensanche’ with its ham, tomato and garlic toast, and delicious little warm pintxos in dishes (‘pintxos calientes’), and the equally wonderful ‘El Globo’ with its fresh tuna and caramelised onion pintxo amongst many others.

Also in the new town one finds two classic 19th-century bars, reminiscent of some of the grand Victorian pubs of the industrial revolution in Liverpool, Manchester,, Glasgow, etc. – ‘La Granja’ and ‘Café Iruna’. Café Iruna is a particularly handsome building decorated (very unusually for Bilbao) in Moorish style, and serving ‘pintxos morunos’ – delicious Moroccan-style skewers of lamb marinated in lemon and spices and grilled over coals in front of you as you wait. ‘La Granja’, on the other hand, has a special counter during the winter months serving freshly cooked ‘talos’ (very tasty flat cornbread filled with the usual things – cheese, fish, meat, peppers, mushrooms, etc.), excellent for winter evenings.

Cazuelitas

For delicious ‘cazuelitas’ (‘little stews’), you can’t do any better than the wonderful Rio Oja, again just by our flat. You can pop in and eat a plate of stew and a chunk of bread standing up at the bar with the locals, with an array of steel pans full of different stews on the counter in front of you.

Eating Out

We didn´t do a huge amount of full-on eating out during the year. With all those delicious ‘pintxos’ and ‘raciones’ to snack on, fitting in big meals out seemed a bit superfluous! Maybe once every couple of weeks we’d have a ridiculously cheap ‘menu del dia’ on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. Several restaurants just by our flat were generally a good bet for this (for instance ‘Kasko’ and ‘Harrobia’), and Café Iruna in the new town was also good.  We also went several times to the two low-key but excellent fish restaurants by the sea in our favourite seaside village, Mundaka, an hour’s train ride away – the cosy ‘Bodegon’ and the ‘Casino’ on the floor above it, with a superb sea view out of its picture windows.

There are plenty of good restaurants all round town, in fact – by the sea in Getxo, Portugalete and Algorta, for instance, and across the river from the old town in Bilbao La Vieja and San Francisco, as well as in the Casco Viejo and the Ensanche. One we wanted to go to but never got round to was ‘El Perro Chico’, just across the river from us, well-known locally for the quality of its food and its atmosphere.

As for grander dining, there are several arty Michelin-starred options in Bilbao (and many more around the food-obsessed Basque country generally), but we only had one meal in the whole year that might qualify under this category, and that (an anniversary treat) was in a little, relatively unpretentious, restaurant called Mina, just across the river from our street, which has one newly-acquired Michelin star. Mina keeps its prices and pretentions down by being in Bilbao La Vieja, a rather bohemian, down-at-heel area of town. It’s called Mina (which means ‘mine’) because it’s on the site of a tunnel going to an old iron mine in the hill above the river. Although I’m not always keen on this kind of food experience, the 7-course tasting menu was very interesting, superbly cooked and beautifully presented, (along with a different (small!) glass of wine with each course.

If it’s high culture you’re looking for, then Bilbao is a pretty good place to be, as provincial cities go. There’s plenty of ‘world class’ art, music, dance, theatre and cinema of many kinds, and some great venues to go and watch / listen to it in. We had some good experiences during the year.

There is a beautiful state-of-the-art orchestral concert hall – the Euskalduna Palace, home of the professional Bilbao Symphony Orchestra (Bilbao Orkestra Sinfonikoa), and one of the homes of the Basque National Orchestra (Euskadiko Orkestra Sinfonikoa):

The BSO lays on a season of about 20 orchestral and 10 chamber concerts between October and June, whilst the Basque National Orchestra contributes another 10 concerts in Bilbao. That’s at least one concert a week during the season. That’s impressive – though it’s counter-balanced by the fact that, apart from those concerts, the wonderful hall is woefully under-used, and does not appear to be on the international orchestral tour circuit at all. The hall contains a spectacular organ, but we saw no sign that it was played at all during the year.

Still, the two home orchestras play very well (the Basque National Orchestra more consistently excellent than the BSO), and there is some interesting programming. A particular highlight was a fair amount of Russian music during the year – especially Shostakovich. The orchestras themselves are very international: only about half the players in each are Basque; quite a few of the others are from Eastern Europe and there are even some from Britain.

There’s also a nice three-day festival of orchestral music in the winter, for which a number of Spanish orchestras and chamber orchestras congregate. Each day there are several concerts in each of three venues within the Euskalduna Palace – the large concert hall and two smaller ones. Each concert lasts an hour and costs between 5 and 9 Euros. You can dot around between halls and orchestras, seeing several one-hour concerts in a day. This year the theme was Spanish and French music. The day we went we saw quite a lot of Ravel and Rodrigo.

There’s no full-time opera company in Bilbao, but the ABAO (Asociation Bilbaina de Amigos de l’Opera) lays on several full-scale professional opera productions in the concert hall each year. Again, there’s some quite adventurous programming – this year, for instance, a couple of less well-known Verdi operas and Bellini’s ‘I Puritani’.

There’s a small early music festival in Bilbao too, and a very impressive season of contemporary chamber concerts. We saw, for instance, Messiaen’s ‘Quartet for the End of Time’ and pieces by like Ligeti and Xenakis, and so on.

There’s plenty of international jazz too, some international folk concerts, and a series of international rock concerts.

The beautiful early 20th century opera house / theatre, the Teatro Arriaga, just round the corner from our flat, offers a variety of cultural experiences, and we’ve been there quite often. It’s a great building which is a city landmark with civic functions beyond that of a theatre, standing as it does by the river in the most popular public space in the city centre, the Arenal. It´s where political demonstrations often gather, and it´s where the tumultuous opening of the summer fiesta is held:

Here, we saw some drama, some music and some dance. Highlights included a great production of Lorca’s Yerma (in Spanish, of course: I read the play in English the day before we went, so I knew what was going on…): (Photo from the internet).

... and another great production of the popular early 20th century ‘zarzuela’, El Caserio (The Farmhouse). (Zarzuela is a Spanish form of operetta, a bit like Gilbert and Sullivan.) The house was packed for El Caserio because not only is it one of the most popular of zarzuelas, but also it is by a Basque composer  (Jesus Guridi), set in the Basque country, and includes a lot of Basque country dancing. (Photos below from the internet.)

Concerts at the Arriaga included a fantastic recital of 19th century piano classics by the renowned 80-year-old Basque pianist Joaquin Achucarro, who was born in Bilbao; a concert by Italian minimalist composer Ludovico Einaudi and his ensemble (which was nice for about 5 minutes and then incredibly boring for the remaining time); and the Bilbao Choral Society´s performance of Carmina Burana (pretty good). Dance we saw included a local, very good contemporary dance company which incorporated elements of Basque country dancing into contemporary dance forms, and a similarly good performance of contemporary dance by the Dance Theatre of Wiesbaden; a recreation of a medieval Basque religious ‘masque’ by the Basque traditional dance company Euskal Dantzari Taldea; and a Flamenco ballet (‘La Pepa’, starring one of the great Flamenco dancers Sara Baras) set in Cadiz and celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Spanish constitution of 1812. (Photos below from the internet)

We saw three stunning flamenco shows in all during the year – and were completely bowled over by this incredibly exciting art form with its raw energy, both in the music and dance

Quite a variety of stuff – and we missed many other interesting performances, such as a recital by Monserrat Caballe, a performance by the Dutch National Ballet, and a production of Hamlet in Spanish….

I’ve written elsewhere about the two great art galleries, the Guggenheim and the Bellas Artes, and their permanent collections. Both also have an excellent series of exhibitions. At the Guggenheim, major international touring exhibitions take place. We saw for instance the David Hockney exhibition which had been in London the previous year, an exhibition of Klimt, and an exceptionally interesting exhibition of Picasso and other French art before, during and after the second world war. At the Bellas Artes, there were three wonderful exhibitions – Goya’s amazing series of engravings, all owned by the museum; a superb show of the paintings of wonderful Colombian artist Botero; and works by the Basque sculptor Nestor Basterretxea. (See previous post on Basque Art for details about Basterretxea).

We particularly loved the Botero, with his almost magic realist paintings of Colombian life, his exuberant portrayal of short fat South American people (challenging conventional European notions of aesthetic beauty – including figures of Christ and the virgin Mary), his exquisitely painted visual jokes (such as his ‘fat’ versions of Renaissance portraits) and satires (such as his paintings of bishops and cardinals), and his sometimes shocking political paintings (including a series of works inspired by Abu Ghraib).

The Goya engravings were also superb - and beautifully displayed - including works by artists who inspired Goya (including Hogarth) and who were in turn inspired by him (e.g. Francis Bacon):

An interesting factor in all this is the very major role that the banks play in funding and laying on culture. It’s a quite different set-up from the UK. The banks (especially the two big ones in Bilbao, the BBK and the BBVA) sponsor absolutely everything – art, music, dance, theatre, festivals, etc. They also sell the tickets for these events. And they even sometimes put concerts and exhibitions on themselves. For instance both the BBVA and the BBK have their own small concert halls where they run concert series. (The BBVA, for instance, are responsible for the contemporary music series: the concerts take place in the handsome 19th century hall at the bank itself, and are entirely free to attend. You just have to write to the bank and ask for a ticket!)

Finally, this was not a year for going to the cinema. My Spanish was not up to it – and almost all English language films were dubbed into Spanish rather than shown with the English soundtrack and Spanish subtitles. The one exception was that we went to see the new film of Great Expectations (‘Grandes Esperanzas’), a story I know so well that it didn’t matter that it was dubbed into Spanish!

Just across the river from the Casco Viejo - between the river and the railway - are the areas known as Bilbao la Vieja and San Francisco, a vibrant but poor district where many immigrants live. It’s quite a bohemian quarter, too, like parts of the Casco Viejo, attracting students, artists, gay people, clubbers, and so on. The city council has been working to improve the area, and a variety of interesting restaurants, cultural venues, etc., have opened here.

The majority of immigrants here are North and West African Muslims, many from Morocco and Senegal, and this is a great place for buying a variety of African spices, grains, and fruit, herbs and vegetables.

Many of the South American immigrants in Bilbao live here too. If you want to get away from the Basque food and culture that almost entirely dominate the rest of the city, this is the place to come.

There’s also a less salubrious side to life in San Francisco. Although Spain’s and Bilbao’s crime rates are relatively low, like all big cities Bilbao has its dark side, with poverty, drugs and prostitution – and San Francisco is home to the red light district, where prostitution (mainly South American women) is visible and drugs raids common.

Mass immigration is relatively new to Spain, and of course it produces the usual problems of integration, xenophobia, etc. that are common to most societies. According to Wikipedia, in 2009 there were ‘127 different nationalities registered in Bilbao, although 60 of them contain fewer than 10 people.’ The largest community by far is the South American (mainly from Bolivia, Colombia, Paraguay, Brazil and Ecuador). They are followed by smaller numbers of Romanians, Moroccans and Chinese. Recent years have also seen an influx of West Africans.

Spanish-speaking South American immigrants are relatively well integrated, and many, for instance, are greengrocers around the city. The small numbers of Chinese immigrants in Bilbao are extremely industrious and set up cavernous shops, known as ‘tiendas chinas’, which sell absolutely everything at incredibly cheap prices, and incredibly low quality. The North Africans from Morocco and around have old links with Spain, and seem relatively settled in San Francisco.

The more recent West African immigrants, however, who have mostly arrived in the last few years, seem far less integrated, and they can often be seen laying out stalls on pavements selling goods such as DVDs and cheap jewellery, or peddling them in cafes and bars, as well as gathering in groups in the streets.

Amongst the West Africans are a couple of very good Kora players: the Kora is a West African stringed instrument which makes a beautiful sound. Hearing them play on the streets has been one of the great pleasures of living in the Casco Viejo this year.

Some might say that immigration is particularly alien to the Basque country, a place which has been pretty undilutedly Basque for thousands of years: the Moors never conquered it, the Jews never made it here, even the Romans and the Visigoths never properly got a foothold. But modern Bilbao is an increasingly multicultural city, and immigrants have also reached some of the lesser cities and larger towns around the Basque country – places like Bermeo, Amorebieta, and so on.

I don’t think immigration seems more problematic here than anywhere else, and modern progressive Basque nationalism seems to be doing a good job of fostering a multicultural society, despite the historic monoculturalism (and at times xenophobic nationalism) of the region and its own battle to revive the language, culture and politics of the Basque people and have them recognised within Spain.