Right now I wan to tell you about something I noticed last weekend; on the footnotes for pictures from the Basque Country, Yahoo News has been using the Basque names for the different Basque towns featured in their news coverage.
Today we have Mundaka on a news item of how this town lost its wave:
U.S. surfer Mike Dobos emigrated to this tiny Basque village just to ride its wave. Eight years later, one of the most famous waves in the world has disappeared.Thousands of surfing enthusiasts used to descend on this northern Spanish village every year for surfing's premier competition, the World Championship Tour.
This year, the Mundaka leg of the Billabong Pro championship has been cancelled because the wave, known as the best "left-hand" in Europe, has vanished.
Some suspect it is due to some work done last year:
Smith and other surfers are convinced the wave disappeared because the estuary was dredged in 2003 to make way for a newly built ship. The sand was used to restore a huge dune nearby and provide a home for endangered plants, and birds such as plovers.
Local officials have ordered a study into what happened to Mundaka's wave. Some scientists say it is just not clear why the vast tubes that drew surfers from around the world no longer roll across the bay.
Could that be the cause?
Anyway, back to my story. Besides Mundaka, a couple of other towns were mentioned by their original name, one of them was Gernika (Guernica) that held a Heavy Rock festival last weekend, and the other one to be mentioned was Getxo (Guecho) as a result of the coastal city being a stage for a famous sail boat race.Kudos to Yahoo News!
Next thing you know they will be showing "ethnic Basque children" in pictures taken by the assorted photojournalists assigned to Euskal Herria.
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