Be Basque

This is the third article about Euskal Herria written by Gavin Stewart for South Africa's Daily Dispatch:

Eat, drink & be Basque

Mountain, meadow and sea define Basque country, food and culture -- recognised world-wide by travellers and travel guides, if not politicians

Daily Dispatch editor Gavin Stewart concludes -- part 3 of 3.

THE sirloin steak arrives at the long table on a plank -- still sizzling with fire, big as a plate, dark as pine-bark, sliced blood-red, tender as a dream.

Matabo Kunene swears this is the best steak she has ever eaten, the most tender. Matabo's opinion is to be taken seriously. She was head cook for the wedding of Nelson Mandela and Graça Machel.

"It must be very fresh," she suggests.

Loren Arkotxa says no. Arkotxa is our host, mayor of the fishing village of Ondorroa and president of the Basque assembly Udalbiltza. The dinner is to celebrate the international conference on peoples rights.

"Steak must hang in a cold room -- about six degrees for many days."

Only then it is grilled on the beds of coals which run across the end of this room and the next. Ideal company in the depths of winter, but winter comes late to the Bay of Biscay and the Basque country.

Proprietor of the cider house and restaurant is the mayor of Astarriaga, a village so close to San Sebastian there is no visible boundary between the two. It is also on top of a hill, which helps to walk up the appetite you need, since the bus cannot turn in the narrow road and has to park some way down.

Between the Pyrénées and the sea is apple country and the cider ferments in the next room, in barrels the size of caravans. It grabs the tongue and gives it a twist and a jerk to make the eyes water.

Those of us accustomed to having everything on the same plate at the same time, get nervous when we have to wait for one treat on one plate at one time.

This way you appreciate each dish a little more. Cod is the most famous part of any Basque meal. And then the roast peppers, which are grown in many varieties, each with a special purpose. And home-baked bread. Then the sirloin, which would suit a solid red wine, and there are plenty of reds about.

But the draught beer comes in a procession of glass jugs frosted with chill, a procession which goes on until sometime after midnight. We are soaked into surrender.

This is probably the best meal whose way I have come in a very long time. The Cathcart Arms Hotel in Grahamstown once served a rump steak in a similar league to the Basque sirloin, and a good draught. No longer.

Then the company may be the reason -- the hardier remnants on the last night of the Udalbiltza international conference on peoples rights.

The city of San Sebastian -- Donostia to Basques -- has taken the roles of harbour, fortress, business centre and summer resort. Its new Kursaal, at the mouth of the Nivelle River, is a model of the modern conference centre.

On the other side of the river, the Old Quarter is a labyrinth of alleyways, shops and bars, of Basque crafts, curios and obsessions -- like model boats and cheese -- tapas bars and shellfish

The walk to the top of the hill behind the Old Quarter, and the heart of the fortress is not as formidable as it looks. It might be even easier by daylight without the rain, but the winding stairways inside the thick stone walls whisper with damp and drip history in the dark.

From the top, the magical bay spreads out below.

The single word most often found in guide-books about San Sebastian is "expensive", although the same books are fulsome in their praise of the restaurants and shops.

A three course dinner was ¤12 at a good hotel (about R120), which is not so extreme for a South African abroad. A plain hotel room in Bayonne was ¤50 (about R500), but there are more modest options -- and plenty more costly ones. You can pay ¤18 (R180) for a cheese...

"The best time to be here is September," say the locals. The summer crowds are gone by then and the warmth is still around.

Playgrounds like San Sebastian and Biarritz are unplayable in summer.

August-September, going on autumn in Europe, has a good share of the feasts and festivals, in which the Basque country revels. The International Cinema Festival, Festival of Latin American Culture, Feast of St Michael of El Paso, Transhumance, Concours of farm dogs, and Basque Week.

Where France's A63 coastal motorway crosses the border into Spain it becomes the A8, which you can know only from looking at a map.

Every landmark is concealed by a wall of large trucks -- signs, trees, houses, mountains and a village which might be Irun. Beyond them is a second barrier of parking lots, liquor stores, outfitters, curio sellers and tapas bars.

Taxes on liquor are much lower in Spain and the volumes sold are huge. The litre is the minimum measure for most tipples in the liquor stores, with five-litre flagons of whisky, brandy, vodka and whatever else, as the more economic option, although they do have a bloated look.

Even allowing for the conversion from rands to Euros, these prices taste good. This is a place to buy gifts weighing one kilo (plus bottle).

The highway is a little inland from the coast roads which threads the seaside cliffs and sews together a dozen fishing villages. Some have stone brides reminding the visitor that the Roman legions and their engineers were also there.

Summer palaces dating to the French monarchy, and earlier, tell you Biarritz has long been popular among the glitterati.

Another warning is the chain of vast car-parks adjacent to pocket-handkerchief beaches. Flesh to flesh in the summer months, apparently, for those who can afford to be there at all.

The suburb La Negresse is named for a larger-than-life woman who owned a tavern there more than a century ago.

In Bayonne, the Museum of the Basques and the History of Bayonne has undergone extensive renovations. Music, artefact and architecture lead the visitor through the history of the region and cultural pursuits which begin with the central home and climb up to the pelota court.

Close by is the Museum Bonnat, the personal collection of portraitist Léon Bonnat with many examples of his own renderings of the grand ladies of Paris a century ago.

At the mountain village of Sare is the mountain train to the heights of Rhune and, somewhere below, the Sare Caves, dating back 45000 years to the Cro Magnon people, reputed to be the direct ancestors of the Basque nation.

An "authentic Basque home" dated 1660 is open to the public, a ground-floor barn with the traditional home of the extended family on two more floors above. Traditionally, the eldest child inherits the house and farm but the older family stays on in the house and everybody gathers there for family occasions.

Contested Guggenheim

THE Basque bid for recognition is embodied in Bilbao's Guggenheim art gallery.

The planning, costs, style and content of Frank Gehry's titanium building were all subject to heated dispute and public protest. So was the commissioning of the North American architect.

It was condemned by critics as American cultural imperialism come crashing down on Basque innocence. Apart from the style of the whole thing, the content was going to be more American than Basque.

The final building, a 35 hectare sculpture of limestone, glass and titanium, floats somewhere between contemporary sculpture and space station.

A main highway into the city undercuts one side, the Nivelle River is 16 metres below the land.

For those pushing the museum, mostly the Basque national parties, the building was intended to fix attention on Bilbao as a modern, high-technology city, rising into a new millennium from the sooty remains of its industrial past.

Surprising its critics, the building appears to have achieved its main aims. The gallery had more than 600 000 visitors in the first six months and its millionth guest well before its first anniversary in 1997.

It increased tourism to the area by more than 25 percent. And it convinced a lot of sceptics that Bilbao has risen from its past.

Here you have the previous two articles:

War on terror comes to haunt Basque rights

Basques' long battle for a place in new Europe

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