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!