Storks (see previous post) were the highlight of our trip to Burgos, but there was plenty more of interest in this very beautiful city.

This was our only trip into Castile, the central region of Spain which was the heartland of the Spanish kingdom for hundreds of years. Burgos – the medieval capital of Castile – with its grand medieval heritage (magnificent cathedral, royal monasteries, enormous castle and so on), its open landscapes, and its lack of industrial hinterland – felt quite different from the grittier, less fancy, mountainous Basque Country, despite being only a few miles south of it. On the other hand, like many cathedral cities, it also felt very much as though it had had its age of splendour and was living off past glories.

The fantastic cathedral – the first great Gothic cathedral of Spain, built in imitation of the French cathedrals – dominates the city…

… with its monumental front…

… its elegant late medieval spires…

… its ornate Renaissance tower…

…and its fortress-like cloisters:

It’s surrounded by handsome squares …

… and overlooked by the castle hill, from which great views can be had:

Inside, the Renaissance tower, with its glazed star-shaped ceiling, is stunning:

Other treasures include an amazing medieval Tree of Jesse...

… and a wealth of fine carving:

The rest of the town is full of picturesque squares and streets ….

… some of them now notably in need of a lick of paint:

The medieval Casa del Cordón is the grandest house in town, where the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella (they of the Inquisition), once held an audience with Christopher Columbus:

Like similar buildings we saw in Vitoria and Pamplona, it has been beautifully modernised inside, now housing a bank and an art gallery:

There´s not much left of the castle, high up on the hill above the town, but it was clearly a massive structure commanding extensive views of the open countryside around:

There are extensive remains of medieval gates, walls and churches around the town…

… including the great gate leading from the river into the cathedral square:

… and the church of St Nicolas with its extraordinary altarpiece:

The tree-lined river threads its way through town…

… with a fine esplanade on the cathedral side:

Burgos is a major centre on the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage route, and we saw lots of pilgrims with sticks, rucksacks and scallops. Oddly most of them seemed to be American.

A half-hour´s stroll out of town along the pilgrimage route, and along the river, is a royal medieval complex which includes the Hospital del Rey (now part of the University of Burgos)…

… and the Monasterio de las Huelgas, founded by Alfonso VIII of Castile and his wife Eleanor of England (daughter of Richard II) in 1187 to house their tombs:

Henry II (of England) and Eleanor of Aquitaine were married here in 1254 too. The Gothic chapel doubles as the Spanish royal mausoleum of the 12th and 13th centuries, and there is a fine Romanesque cloister, but alas the very famous medieval music manuscript, the Las Huelgas Codex (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Las_Huelgas), was not on display.

In recent years, Burgos has attempted, with moderate success, to re-invent itself a la Guggenheim, by opening the rather wonderful Museum of Human Evolution, in response to the extraordinary early human archaeological finds at nearby Atapuerca. I’ll write about this further in a separate post, but meanwhile here is the museum complex…

… which includes the conference centre where Pietro was attending a Virology conference:

Note the wonderful ideographic representation of the evolving human which serves as the logo for the complex:

Outside the museum is a mesmerising fountain…

… and nearby is a monument to the great historical figure of Burgos’s past, El Cid, who it turns out didn’t have much to do with Burgos apart from having been born there, and wasn’t quite the Christian hero he was supposed to have been. But hey…

We almost, but not quite, failed to go to the modest but lovely Museum of Burgos:

We’re very glad indeed that we went, however, if only because of this spectacularly wonderful enamelled Romanesque panel, one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen all year:

Finally, a word about the speciality sweet of Burgos, the ‘yema’:

If you like pure raw egg yolks and sugar, you’ll enjoy it. Otherwise, you might find them slightly disgusting. So do as I did, and take them home and make marzipan out of them…

As Euskadi’s major metropolis, Bilbao has inevitably been at the heart of the Basque conflict and the activities of extreme left nationalist group ETA - Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (which means Basque Homeland (Euskadi) and Freedom (Askatasuna)). It’s hard to imagine that the city we’ve come to love so much was until recently the scene of such terrible atrocities.

As Euskadi’s major metropolis, Bilbao has inevitably been at the heart of the Basque conflict and the activities of extreme left nationalist group ETA - Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (which means Basque Homeland (Euskadi) and Freedom (Askatasuna)). It’s hard to imagine that the city we’ve come to love so much was until recently the scene of such terrible atrocities.

Two years ago ETA announced a permanent end to its armed struggle, and there is no sense of any violent conflict here now – though there are many large political demonstrations. As yet, however, there have been no moves towards decommissioning of arms, as there was in Northern Ireland, and relationships between the Basque  ‘abertzale’ (nationalist) left and the Spanish government are nowhere near as positive as they were in Ireland between Sinn Fein, Ireland and the Blair government.

In part, this is because of the reactionary intransigence of the Spanish hard-line right wing government (although to be fair the left-wing government that preceded it was not much better in this respect). However, it’s also in part because ETA is in a far weaker position than Sinn Fein was, since the Basque Country already has pretty much everything that Northern Ireland achieved through its peace process – i.e. a very substantially devolved regional government giving the region a great deal of democratic autonomy. In fact, the Basque Country has more autonomy, since it (alone amongst the Spanish autonomous regions) has fiscal autonomy too.

There’s also a fair amount of scepticism about how permanent the ceasefire is, since ETA has announced permanent ceasefires before and they have not lasted (though this has lasted longer than others and seems more stable). A few weeks ago, ETA released a statement denouncing the lack of progress that has been made in negotiations with Spain following its ceasefire. This certainly reads as a genuine cry of frustration, but there’s no doubt that it has vaguely threatening overtones too.

Whatever one might feel about ETA, it does seem as though the Spanish government is not responding as open-mindedly as it might to ETA’s overtures – and that it has barely set a foot right in the Basque conflict since the end of the Franco regime nearly 40 years ago.

At the heart of the current conflict is the question of the Basque prisoners – a huge issue that has very substantial support across the Basque Country. Hundreds of people imprisoned because of their involvement in ETA are held in prisons in France and Spain, deliberately many hundreds of miles from the Basque Country, meaning that families have to travel long distances to visit them. The authorities, of course, want to keep the prisoners well away from local networks. Now that ETA has announced its ceasefire, there is huge public support for the campaign to bring them ‘back home’ (‘etxera’) to local prisons.

Flags hang from windows all over the Basque Country in protest at the situation, demanding that the prisoners return ‘etxera’ – and ‘etxera’ is the chant you hear at all manner of political and cultural events.

The government refuses point blank to return the prisoners. Not only that, the situation has been inflamed by moves to keep many of the prisoners incarcerated for longer periods by means of the ‘Parot Doctrine’, which means that remission for work done in prison is deducted from their total sentence rather than from the shorter maximum period (30 years) they will actually spend in jail. The European Court of Human Rights decreed last year that this was illegal, and Spain is currently challenging that ruling, but it seems fairly clear that Spain’s actions here are unjust, almost certainly illegal, and certainly counter-productive.

There have been many massive demonstrations about this over the last few years, including three in Bilbao since we have been here (one happening today) – and many others throughout the Basque Country. This picture of the last major demonstration in Bilbao, in January, gives an indication of how massive it was:

This video (at http://www.eitb.com/es/videos/detalle/1224506/video-manifestacion-u12--multitudinaria-manifestacion-bilbao) also shows how huge the demonstration in January was, as well as being an interesting insight into the popular nationalist appeal of the cause:

And here's a nationalist video collage of the event  (www.youtube.com/watch?v=88qngm_qbjI) which gives a sense of how the issue about the prisoners stands as a symbol for Basque nationalism more generally:

What do the Basques actually feel about ETA, given that a substantial majority of the population consider themselves Basque nationalists of one kind or another?

First, it’s important to recognize that not all Basque nationalists are separatists: some are happy with autonomy rather than independence. Second, it’s important to recognize that most left-wing nationalists do not support the extreme-left terrorist tactics of ETA. Third, not all Basque nationalists are left-wing – far from it; the main nationalist party (PNV) is in fact centre-right, and Basque nationalism began in the 19th century as a xenophobic right-wing movement with a somewhat fascist philosophy (though it has moved a long way from that position in the last century.) Fourth, there has been a massive anti-ETA campaign amongst Basques of all political views.

It’s also very important, however, to recognize the widespread grievances that exist against Spain, many of which date back to the brutal suppression of the Basque Country during Franco’s time, pre-1976 – some aspects of which continued even after Franco’s death. The Spanish army and police attacked the Basques violently in the transitional period after Franco’s death, and even today are felt by many to be a potential threat. Furthermore, there have been and continue to be many reports of torture and maltreatment of Basque prisoners and suspects by the Spanish state, which have fed these grievances; the Spanish government’s banning of pro-independence left-wing parties (especially the popular Batasuna) which are suspected of being in sympathy with ETA has certainly not helped things and is again widely perceived as a breach of democratic rights.

Although there is little direct support for ETA, there is a great deal of support for many of ETA’s aims, and ETA is in some senses deeply embedded in the community throughout Euskadi: there is no ‘other side´ in the Basque country as there is in Northern Ireland, where the fight is between catholic and protestant extremists. Many Basque people will no doubt know or be related to someone who has been involved with ETA in some way, or will be involved socially and politically around the edges of the extreme left – drinking and socializing in the gritty working class nationalist bars called ‘Herriko Tabernas’ (‘Homeland Bars’) that are found all over the Basque Country – even if they actually have nothing to do with ETA.

And whatever one feels about nationalism, one has to recognise that nationalist sentiment of all kinds is VERY powerful and widespread here for all kinds of reasons. The strength of communal feeling for Basque identity and culture is palpable throughout Euskadi, and often very moving (I've written about this in previous posts). And socially progressive, left-wing nationalism is particularly powerful here because of the way the Basques, the gritty Northerners, have been oppressed by right-wing Madrid establishments over the last century and more. You can see here of course echoes of the relationship between England and N. Ireland, and between England and Scotland, and between London and the industrial north of England – but the Basque cause is distinguished by its severe oppression by fascism during the Franco years.

Everything has to be understood against a background of unresolved tensions following the Spanish Civil War and the long rule of the Franco regime. Many in Spain feel that the fascists who thrived under Franco have never had to pay the price for their crimes, nor has there ever been any truth or conciliation process. Many of the fascists continued, and still continue, to hold positions within the Spanish government and military. (See Giles Tremlett’s excellent book ‘The Ghosts of Spain’ for much more on this.)

So, whether people actually support ETA’s terrorist actions or not (and most of course DON’T), there is still widespread support for bringing the prisoners back home, and a widespread sense of more general grievance against Spain, especially given the current right-wing regime.

And there is one other issue that has the potential to unite the different shades of Basque nationalism against the Spanish: the question of self-determination. Whether they believe that the Basque Country should be independent or not, whether they are left or right wing nationalists, many people believe that the Basques should at least be given the choice via a referendum, something the Spanish government refuses to allow, saying that it is against the Spanish Constitution – a constitution that the majority of Basques do not consider themselves to have ratified, since most abstained or voted against it in the 1978 referendum on it.  Only 35% of the electorate in the Basque Country supported the new constitution.

Why did the majority of Basques reject (or abstain in the vote on) the constitution when it offered them the substantial autonomy that they now have? Right-wingers, as I understand it, objected particularly to the proposal to make Navarra into a separate autonomous region rather than part of a united Basque region (see previous post on Pamplona for further detail on this). Left-wingers objected for a wide variety of reasons. Aiartza and Zabalo (2010) report that there were five main unresolved issues:

·      Amnesty for Basque prisoners (still unresolved)

·      Legalisation of pro-independence parties (still unresolved)

·      Withdrawal of Spanish police force (* There has since 1982 been an autonomous Basque police force, the Ertzaintza, but it is widely regarded by the left as a puppet of the Spanish state).

·      Acceptance of the right to self-determination, including Navarra as part of a Basque state (still unresolved)

·      Improvement of working class conditions in the Basque Country

but of course their political objections were far broader than this list indicates.

So where does this leave us? With limited access to the locals, we haven’t been able to have many in-depth discussions with them about these issues, but what we see around us is a region in which the Basques have a very large amount of autonomy, and freedom to express their culture, language, politics and identity, in a way similar to Wales and Scotland – and in some ways even more so, since they also have considerable fiscal independence (such as tax-gathering powers). We see what appears in many ways to be a well-balanced society in which nationalism is, at least in urban multicultural areas, inclusive and progressive. Many people we’ve spoken to are happy with this situation, and suspicious of more fundamentalist nationalism.

We are also strongly aware, however, of the very real grievances many of the Basques have against a Spanish state that still behaves reprehensibly, the pain of recent Basque history, and the powerful cultural, linguistic and historical arguments for an independent Basque state – more powerful in many ways than any of the British nations (or, at risk of being controversial, even than Catalunya).

It’s a complex state of affairs, and all we can do is keep trying to understand it. I’ve been reading a fair amount of general stuff on Basque history and culture, and in an effort to try to understand what we see around us, I’ve read the following academic reports on the Basque Conflict:

The Basque Country: the Long Walk to a Democratic Scenario by Urko Aiartza and Julen Zabalo (Berghof Conflict Research, Transitions Series No 7, Berlin 2010)

Keys to Understanding the ETA’s Permanent Ceasefire by Sandra Chapman (Lokarri, Bilbao 2012)

Basque Country Conflict Map (University of St Andrews, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies 2010)

We’ve also watched a couple of really interesting films about it, both thoroughly recommended. La Pelota Vasca is a documentary which simply presents voices from all sides, taking the metaphor of the Basque game Pelota as a symbol of the conflict. It’s ten years old, now, so it is a bit out of date, but it nevertheless gives a very good overview of the situation. Gazta Zati Bat is a more recent (and more entertaining) film which focuses on the question of self-determination rather than the question of independence, and follows a grass-roots political movement in Euskadi which initiates a cultural and political exchange between Scottish and Basque nationalists – cue lots of amusing film of Scottish and Basque country sports, folk music and dancing, etc., as well as explorations of the shared politics of independence referenda….

I’ve written a fair bit about our experience of the Basque language (Euskara), and its political and cultural significance in the Basque Country. But we’ve also encountered two other interesting minority languages this year.

First was Catalan in Barcelona. Of course we knew in advance about Catalan. But it still took us by surprise when we saw it actually written down. ‘Look,’ said Pietro. ‘It’s just like Italian.’ ‘Look,’ said Gary. ‘It’s just like French’. And indeed it was just like both, with a bit of Spanish thrown in. And much easier to understand than Spanish.

Here are some of the things we loved about Catalan:

• Brilliantly short nouns, e.g. pa = pan (bread), vi = vin (wine), mon = mondo (world), Pau = Paulo, pi = pino (pine), antic = antico (old)
  
• Words ending in 'iu', e.g. distintiu = distintivo, palau = palacio, museu, etc.
  
• Words ending in 'atges', e.g. homatges, usatges  (cf French 'ages')
  
• Words ending in 'ys', e.g. anys = anos, banys = banos

The second minority language experience took us by surprise. In Bayonne, in the Pays Basque, we discovered that the road signs were in not just the two languages we expected – Basque and French – but also in a third, Gascon. ‘Look,’ said Gary and Pietro. ‘It’s just like Catalan’. And indeed it was.

(NB: the word ‘Gascon’ is a variant of the word ‘Vasco’ or ‘Basque’… but Gascon is nevertheless a variant of French, not of Basque.)

There  was one week (when we took the train from Bilbao to Barcelona and then on to Geneva and Basel) when we had to deal with Spanish, Catalan, Basque, French and German all in one week... That was Language Overload.

Finally: Spanish. I eventually – almost at the end of our stay! – went on an intensive beginners’ course in Spanish (20 hours), at the ‘Instituto Ernest Hemingway’, just a few minutes’ walk from our flat.  There were just two of us in the class, which was great, and gave us lots of opportunity to speak, making hundreds of mistakes in a safe environment. The good news is that we went so fast that the teacher kept running out of material. This is probably because both of us had had some prior experience of Spanish (even if for me it was just having listened to it and been around it for almost a year), and of French and Italian and Latin too. The bad news is that 20 hours of beginners Spanish doesn’t make you a competent speaker or listener by a long chalk…

Still, at least I now have another language under my belt to be incompetent in.

The Basque Country is effectively the foothills of the Pyrenees. It’s extremely hilly – densely so – and indeed quite mountainous in parts.

Unfortunately I suffer badly from vertigo and/or have a ridiculous phobia about heights  (depending on which way you look at it) which often manifests itself on exposed hillsides, even not particularly steep ones. It’s a form of agoraphobia, if you like, which affects all my balance mechanisms when a certain combination of open space and height kicks in. It doesn´t particularly bother me when I’m surrounded by trees or buildings, but as soon as they disappear I go a bit funny.

So my appreciation of the Basque hills has been somewhat limited this year.  I’ve enjoyed looking at them from a distance, and taking trains through them: I like a nice hill as much as the next man. And many of the Basque hills are very satisfyingly green, forested and alpine. But I haven’t ventured up many of them. Which is a shame, as by all accounts they are extremely good to venture up, and provide some excellent views.

Bilbao itself is entirely surrounded by substantial hills, the reason it is sometimes called ‘El Botxo’ (‘The Hole’). Directly above the Casco Viejo is Mount Artxanda, served by a funicular, whilst on the other side of the river is Mount Pagasarri, which many Bilbainos walk up at weekends. Wherever you are in Bilbao, you can see the green (or white in winter) of the surrounding hills.

From the Casco Viejo, there are a number of quite dramatic staircases and lifts which one can take up the lower slopes of Artxanda to the Begoña district, from where one can get some intermediate views of the centre of Bilbao. These are the Mallona steps….

…. which lead to Etxebarri Park, from which one can see the river and the Guggenheim threading through the centre of town:

Round the corner, are the Solokoetxe steps…

… which afford great views of the Casco Viejo, with the cathedral spire rising above it:

To get to the top of Artxanda, there is a funicular from the centre of town. I have reluctantly done this two or three times in order to see the great views from up there:

There’s also a good monument to the victims of the Spanish Civil War:

Venturing out of Bilbao, there are many terrifying cliffs by the coast, which I have mentioned in previous posts. I was persuaded one day to walk to the top of the highest cliff on the Bizkaia coast (up the hill behind the cliff, I hasten to add, rather than up the cliff itself). There was a spectacular view, which I admired well away from the edge:

Inland, there are the mountains of the beautiful Basque Highlands, to which we’ve made a couple of trips. Once, we even got to the top of the relatively easy Mount Saibigain, in the Gorbeia Natural Park, (or at least Pietro did: I chickened out of the last little bit) which gave us a nice view of some snow-covered peaks:

We also got views of the nearby Mount Amboto, famed in Basque mythology as the home of the goddess Mari:

There are many more great excursions to be made into the highlands. I’m sad, for instance, that we didn´t have time for a trip to the Gipuzkoa side of the mountains, to see the towns of Tolosa (where the beans come from) and Idiazabal (where the cheese comes from), and so on.

Even though I would have probably have been petrified.

From Paris, the train takes 3 hours to reach Bordeaux, then another 2 hours to reach the little Pays Basque, in the deepest south-west corner of France. From there, it winds slowly for an hour along the small stretch of the Basque coast to Spain, going through Bayonne (the main city of the Pays Basque), past Biarritz, Getaria and Saint Jean de Luz, and ending up in the border town of Hendaye. There one enters Spain and boards a ‘Euskotren’ to Bilbao.

We’d had some tantalising glimpses of the French Basque coast on our train journeys to and from England, so, after our trips to Santander and Hondarribia (see previous post), we spent a couple of days there, curious to see how Basqueness translated from Spain into France. Unfortunately the weather was pretty terrible, so we didn’t see the place at its best.

We started at the northern end of the Basque coast, in Bayonne (Baiona in Basque), a beautiful city with an imposing, if rather plain, Gothic cathedral, and lots of medieval character:

Immediately, it was clear that French culture and language were dominant here in a way that Spanish culture and language aren’t (by and large) in the Spanish Basque country: there were shops, cafes and so on with Basque names, but relatively few. Unsurprisingly, Basqueness here had more of a French feel than in Spain, too. The food was quite different, with a distinctly French style. The architecture too was quite different, again rather French in style.

Still, there were substantial signs of Basque life here. A lot of people looked distinctively Basque, and the old town had the same slightly gritty and down-at-heel feel of most Basque old towns, with the usual Basque political graffiti in evidence:

Most of all, there was a really excellent Basque museum, covering the history, archaeology, art, language and culture of the Basques. And we even found one of the only two or three ‘makila’ makers left in the whole Basque Country. (A ‘makila’ is a Basque shepherd’s walking stick, made of medlar and often elaborately carved, which has a hidden blade in its base so that it doubles as a kind of spear. They are highly prized, often handed down from generation to generation, and often presented to people to honour them on special occasions.)

We discovered some wonderful cheeses from the Pyrenees, and the herbal liqueur of the Pays Basque, ‘Izarra’:

We also encountered the chocolate of Bayonne, famous because it was to Bayonne that chocolate was first brought to France, by Jewish ‘chocolatiers’ who had fled the Spanish Inquisition in 1492. A number of distinguished chocolatiers still exist in the town…

… and there is still a Jewish community here:

Our visits to Biarritz and Saint Jean de Luz were much briefer, and extremely wet.

Biarritz is a busy, sprawling seaside resort, fashionable (although not the height of fashion that it was a few decades ago) and not terribly attractive, with hardly any discernible Basque character, but a few grand 19th century buildings, and one or two atmospheric corners that indicate its past as a fishing port:

Saint Jean de Luz (Donibane Lohizune in Basque), on the other hand, is a very pretty and atmospheric little town with considerable character, though somewhat over-run by tourists. We were there for three hours and it rained non-stop and heavily for the entire time, so we weren´t able to appreciate it at its best. However, we managed to get a good feel for its distinctively French-Basque style of domestic architecture, and noted that aspects of Basque language and culture were more in evidence here:

It turned out that the town also had royal connections, since Louis XIV married Teresa of Spain here in 1660, and there are some rather grand houses where royalty stayed:

Of course there´s a lot more to the Pays Basque than this little stretch of coast, however pretty it is. By all accounts, the most interesting part of the Pays Basques – and by far the most Basque part – is the mountainous inland part in the Western Pyrenees – the towns of Pau and Saint Jean Pied de Port and so on.  We didn´t have time to get there, unfortunately.

Here on the coast of the Pays Basques, Basque culture and language seemed largely to be little more than a tourist curiosity in a way that we have not encountered anywhere in the Spanish Basque Country – perhaps because there is nothing like the volume of tourism in the Spanish region that we encountered here on the French coast. There’s no doubt that the experience would be more quintessentially Basque in the Pyrenees.

But there’s also no doubt that Basqueness is not as big a deal in France as it is in Spain. Whilst there is some Basque nationalism in France (and, for instance, many Spanish ETA fugitives have found refuge in France) it´s not anywhere near as widespread as it is in Spain. Unlike the Basque Country in Spain, of course, the Pays Basque has no political autonomy: indeed, it does not even constitute a region of France, being only a part of the department of Pyrenees-Atlantique.  There is no government policy to have Euskara taught in schools, and so on.

In Basque, the Pays Basque is referred to as ‘Iparralde’ – the North Country – whilst the Spanish side is ‘Hegoalde’ – the South Country – and of course many in the Basque country would like the north and south to be united.  This is often expressed as '4+3 + 1" (4 Basque provinces in Spain plus three Basuqe provinces in France = 1 Basque Country). Anyone desiring to see a united, independent, cross-border Basque Country is likely to have some time to wait, though.

Before we came out to Spain, we had an idea that we’d like to take the little narrow-gauge train line that wends its way very slowly along the beautiful and often wild north coast of Spain from the French border to Santiago de Compostella in Galicia. It would have taken at least a couple of weeks to get there and back, staying in various places along the way. It never happened. However, we have caught some beautiful glimpses of the coast in Cantabria and the Basque Country, and on up into the French Basque Country – and these are the subject of my next few posts.

At the beginning of May, we spent a weekend in Cantabria, the coastal region to the East of the Basque Country – one of only three forays we have made outside the Basque Country. We stayed with some ex-colleagues of Pietro who now live in Santander, and who were happy to drive us around and show us some of the highlights. We were also lucky in that it was a spectacularly hot and sunny weekend (a rare event in this year’s washout spring!)

We didn’t spend much time in Santander itself, but it is a handsome port city, with acres of beautiful beach, and lovely views from the hill above the city:

The most stunning view is of the snow-covered Picos de Europa mountains in the distance. It was a rather hazy day, so the view was not as clear as it might be, but where else in Europe can you get sand, sea, palm trees and snow-covered mountains in the same view?

One of the most important of Spanish ports in medieval days, the old town of Santander was unfortunately burnt down in a fire in 1941, but the rebuilt version is very pleasant, and much of the old cathedral survived the fire:

The highlight of the weekend was a day out along the Cantabria coast, stopping at the beautiful medieval town of Santillana del Mar, the nearby caves of Altamira (home of some of the most important stone age cave paintings), the strange assemblage of art nouveau architecture in the town of Comillas, and the stunning beach and dunes at Liencres.

Santillana has a reputation as one of the prettiest towns in Spain. It’s certainly very picturesque indeed, and it’s certainly geared up for tourists too (though the day we went was thankfully fairly quiet). We enjoyed wandering the streets…

… but the main event, especially if, like me, you are a fan of the Romanesque, is the church, one of the finest Romanesque churches in the north of Spain:

The carvings in the cloister are particularly exquisite:

Near Santillana are the famous caves of Altamira, with their stone age paintings, which I’ll write about in a separate post. A few miles further along the coast is the town of Comillas, well-known for a collection of buildings in the ‘modernisme’ style (Spanish art nouveau), including this folly by Gaudi:

Finally, we drove through the lovely port of San Vicente de la Barquera (which I didn't manage to get a good picture of), and then back to Santander, stopping for a stroll on the beautiful beach at Liencres:

The coach back to Bilbao took us along the coast back from Santander, a journey on which we got tantalising glimpses of the coastal resorts of Laredo and Castro Urdiales, where many Bilbainos go at weekends to get away from the city.

Immediately after our trip to Santander, we headed east along the coast of the Basque Country, another very beautiful stretch. First there is the coast of Bizkaia.

The area immediately north-east of Bilbao is rocky and cliffy, and not good for one who suffers from vertigo, but has lots of good coves and beaches, for instance in Sopelana and Plentzia. Last weekend, we went further along the coast to the town of Bakio, now a very pleasant beach resort:

... and up in to the hills above Bakio to visit the remote little Romanesque ‘ermita’ of San Pelaio:

... and the beautiful island of San Juan de Gastalugatxe nearby. San Juan has an extraordinary set of steps that goes terrifyingly up to the church at the top of the island. Needless to say, I satisfied myself with the view from the mainland:

After San Juan de Gastelugatxe,  you reach the wonderful Urdaibai estuary where you find the port of Bermeo (which in medieval times was the most important port on the Bay of Biscay), and the beautiful fishing villages of Mundaka and Elantxobe, all of which I’ve written about in previous posts:

All these places are quite down-to-earth working towns which perhaps don’t have the cute picture-postcard qualities of some Cornwall and Devon equivalents, but whose grittiness makes them interesting and picturesque in different ways: unlike Devon and Cornwall, the natives can still afford to live there.

Heading east, you move into the province of Gipuzkoa, passing a number of similar fishing towns, many with great beaches - Lekeitio, Ondarroa, Deba, Zumaia, Getaria and Zarautuz – and many villages. And then you get to San Sebastian, which I’ve also written about previously.

After San Sebastian you get to Hondarribia, our destination on this particular trip, on our way to the Pays Basque in France. Hondarribia is the coastal border town on the Spanish side of the border between Spain and France. We took the train from Bilbao via San Sebastian to the French border town of Hendaye. From there we took a little ferry across the bay...

and back across the border into Spain, to Hondarribia, a ride which gave us great views of the town:

In the middle of the picture you’ll see a monumental castle-esque building. This rather grand place was where we were staying – and it was indeed once a medieval castle, now a parador.

(Paradors are historic buildings turned into hotels through a Spanish government scheme dating back to the 1930s. They are often quite expensive to stay in, but we got a good bargain and decided – for the sake of the experience of staying in such a historic place – to treat ourselves to something a little more luxurious than the cheap pensions we normally go for.)

The castle dates from the 9th century, and the ruins of that original building were immediately outside our bedroom window:

The standing part of the castle was built in the 15th century:

The town itself has a typically astmospheric ‘casco viejo’…

… and some great border-town fortifications:

You may notice that the vernacular style of the houses in Hondarribia is a little different from that of the rest of the Spanish Basque Country: indeed, it is a little more like the French Pays Basque, which it neighbours, and which will be the subject of the next post….

We’re just back from a few days in Burgos, the great medieval pilgrimage city in Castilla y Leon, south of the Basque Country (where Pietro was attending a Virology Conference).

I will write in more detail about this trip soon, but I want to devote this post to a beautiful thing we experienced whilst there.

We were sitting outside a bar in the old town of Burgos when we heard a loud chattering noise above our heads which sounded like a woodpecker. Strange place to find a woodpecker, I thought  - but there were a couple of trees in the church behind me, so I looked up. I couldn’t see anything.  I turned my head to look at the roof of the church and was amazed to see a huge nest containing a stork perched precariously on top of the old stone parapet at the top of the Renaissance bell tower.

As we wandered around Burgos, we realised that there were storks on virtually every bell tower and quite a number of chimneys.

Sometimes there were multiple nests on a single tower, delightfully symmetrically arranged on its various ledges.

It turns out that the White Stork migrates north each summer from its home in Africa to rear its young in Spain and in Eastern Europe. They avoid the Mediterranean as they find it difficult to fly over the sea; some go north-east, over Egypt and Turkey and across to Poland and Germany, whilst others go north-west, over Morocco and into Spain. Apparently thousands of them can be seen across the towns and countryside of Castilla y Leon, nesting in trees and on church towers. Like the medieval Arabs, the ones that come to Spain mostly get as far north as Burgos but not much further: they don’t reach the Basque Country: too cold and wet for them, I suppose.

There is something quite magical about these huge rather exotic birds living their lives at church-roof level above our heads. Every now and again one hears that extraordinary chattering sound, looks up and sees another nest. Every now and again there is a flap of wings and a stork glides gracefully away from the nest into the sky. As we walked around town we were mesmerised by the sight of the adults feeding the chicks, preening themselves, or simply sitting on one leg looking out over the land. (They seem to able to stand totally still on one leg for hours.)

Perhaps the most beautiful thing I’ve seen all year was a single stork perched on one leg on a gargoyle on the massive ornate Gothic front of the great cathedral of Burgos. We stood watching it as dusk fell and then reluctantly went to have supper. More than two hours later as we passed the cathedral in the dark on the way home, it was still there in exactly the same place, still perched on one leg. 

It was there again next morning and returned once more to the same spot next evening.

Every summer in Spain and Poland these statuesque birds arrive as if from nowhere, perch on church towers, produce chicks, and then leave. Is this why folklore has it that that babies are delivered by storks?

I’ve written about Gernika in a previous post. We’ve now been four times to this very poignant and interesting town, and to the nearby fishing village of Mundaka. On our recent visits to Gernika we went to see the memorial park on the hill above the town, which we had not had time to do previously.

The park (opened in 1987 for the 50th anniversary of the bombing) is known as the Parque de los Pueblos de Europa, and is intended to act as a memorial to the bombing of Gernika and other bombed cities by celebrating the post-war European peace. The summit of the park is marked by a graceful, though unfortunately somewhat graffiti-ridden, Henry Moore statue called ‘Large Figure in a Shelter’:

There’s also a Chillida sculpture called ‘Our Father’s House’ (‘Gure aitaren etxea’), whose main 'window' looks out towards the Oak Tree of Gernika: not Chillida at his best, but nevertheless an interesting monument.

Here too are some more pictures of the Oak of Gernika, now that Spring has come and the leaves are out:

And here are some more pictures of the nearby beautiful village of Mundaka on the Urdaibai estuary:

Only three weeks to go before we leave Bilbao! I have so much more to write, however, that I will probably end up posting for a few weeks once I’m back in Britain…

The weather here has been terrible, as it has almost everywhere in Europe it seems. May was pretty much a washout. It wasn’t so much the rain that was the problem: that can be expected at any time in Bilbao. It was the low temperatures and unmitigated greyness which were unexpected and unusual for this time of year. However, things are looking up now, and this week the weather is glorious.

On Sunday, we went on a day trip to La Rioja, in the very south of the Basque Country. We’d been through it on the train from Bilbao to Barcelona last year and had been stunned by its beauty. This is what it looked like from the train

... so we had determined to try and get there for a day this summer. Despite the mixed weather – the day started in fog and rain and ended in beautiful sunshine – the place looked as beautiful as we had remembered it.

La Rioja is a huge plain, surrounded by mountains and entirely covered in vineyards, through which the River Ebro runs. The Ebro forms the southern border of the Basque Country, with the region of Castilla y Leon on the other side of the river.  On the north bank of the river, in the southernmost part of the Basque Country, is one of the most beautiful parts of La Rioja, known as La Rioja Alavesa  (the part of La Rioja in Alava, the southern province of Euskadi). Some of the finest Rioja wines are Basque wines, made from the grapes of La Rioja Alavesa.

To get to La Rioja, you drive to the very southern edge of the Basque mountains until you reach ‘El Balcon de la Rioja’ on the Herrera Pass - a stunning viewpoint from which you can see for miles across the whole of the plain to the mountains of Castilla. Or at least you can when the weather is good. The road then drops dramatically down the mountain to the plain. There was dense fog at the top so we were denied the full view but as we descended, the fog cleared and we still managed a pretty good view.

Once down in the plain, one negotiates a spectacularly beautiful landscape of vine-covered glacial hillocks, with occasional rocky outcrops with hill-towns built on them. One such hill-town, the main centre of the area, is Laguardia, a medieval town with views across the plain in all directions.

Laguardia, like all the towns and villages in La Rioja, is full of wineries (‘bodegas’): there are hundreds of them across the region, and the area is very much geared towards wine tourism. Several of the wineries have spectacular modern buildings which are the work of internationally distinguished architects. The two most famous are the extraordinary Marques de Riscal Bodega  designed by Gehry (of Guggenheim fame), and the Ysios Bodega, designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, who also designed the beautiful new bridge across the river in Bilbao.

We only had time to see one of these. We didn´t go to the Gehry, but here is a picture of it pinched from the internet:

We did, however, go to Calatrava’s Ysios winery. We had an interesting tour of the winery workings, and a tasting of a couple of nice Ysios wines, but the building itself is the major attraction:

Close up, it seems to imitate the mountains behind it, and provides a spectacular backdrop for the vineyards.

The main entrance is stunning.

Looking in one sees lovely reflections of the vineyards:

Looking out from the tasting room, the hill of Laguardia is framed by the surrounding vineyards:

One short day only gave us a glimpse of what must be one of the most beautiful wine-growing areas in Europe. It’s clear that one could spend a delightful couple of weeks pottering around wineries and medieval hill-towns here, and eating and drinking extremely well, and seeing some great architecture. And maybe one day we will….

Whats going on? It has been warmer in England than here this week! We had some glorious weather a couple of weeks ago, but apart from that the last mo it's been dismal.... The average maximum in May is supposed to be 20 degrees