Basque Country

The week I spent in Casa Indakoborda, in the Basque Area of Navarra, Spain was lovely. If you’re looking to go somewhere for relaxation, brilliant walks, beautiful countryside, excellent food with an interesting culture and history, this is the place.

I flew into Biarritz, the French basque town by the sea, that is now quite touristy and had rather sweet ice cream. Since the formation of the EU, all the border patrol stations have been either removed, or left unmanned, so it’s quite strange driving through the French/Spanish border with only a large supermarket and several tourist shops to let you know you’ve passed into a new country (the supermarket was filled with the French doing their weekly shop for the cheaper, lower taxed Spanish prices).

Casa Indakaborda was a beautiful old Basque house in the hills near Elizondo. Our only neighbours were some rather noisy cows, residents of the nearby farm, a colony of bats that lived in the barn, and the rare basque bird, the hoopoe. We were visited by the local pottoka, a breed of small spanish horses that roam the hills. Many pottoka have bells round their necks, that I assume the locals have attached to keep track of their roamings.

The Basque Country is know by the Basque’s as Euskadi, meaning “the land of the basque speakers.” The Basque language, euskara, is one of the oldest spoken languages and does not route from any Indo-European family. What I find particularily interesting about the Basque language is that it is not based on antithetical definitions, such as that in christian-influenced languages. For example, instead of the opposities of heaven and hell, black and white, good and evil, the Basque language see’s black as being good and red as being life.

The first settlements in Navarra date back to 600,000 B.C. It was given it’s name over 1000 years ago, and was one of the larger independant Spanish kingdoms, at one time covering the areas of La Rioja and Cantabria, Castilla y Leon and Aragon. In 1513 it became part of Spain, but is an autonomous region, maintaining its own government. Throughout it’s occupation of the romans, visigoths and moors, it has managed to maintain it’s basque language, until Franco’s rule from 1939 - 1975, when the dictator tried to wipe out the language.

We didn’t need to go out to dinner, as the food you can get from the supermarket is top quality. We made full use of the barbeque at casa Indakaborda, and gobbled down chorizo’s, delicious kebabs, wonderful grilled aubergines and amazing stuffed squid with pancetta. The Basque food is famed to be the best in Spain, their pintxos (tapas), supposed to be exceptionally good. Unfortunately we lucked out in San Sebastian and had the worst tapas I’ve ever tasted. What we worked out was that these pintxos weren’t like normal tapas, but were the little sandwiches topped with tasty meats and cheeses displayed on the bars. San Sebastian as a city didn’t leave a very nice taste in my mouth and it came across extremely touristy, and lacking a hearty personality.

Have a look at my flickr set to see more.