Basque Exports

This note appeared today at EITb:

Business

Interesting

Cloth from Dolce & Gabbana jeans, bull sperm among Basque exports

11/25/2007

The Basque Country, a small country in northern Spain home to 2.1 million people, has usually been related to ancient customs and metallurgy. However, you would be surprised if you asked about its exports.

Have you ever wondered where does the cloth of your favorite jeans come from? Or who has made that incredibly good-looking guitar your most-loved artist is playing? Well, you might find odd answers to these questions you never dared to ask.

Answers to all these questions make a very different picture of many countries. The Basque Country, a small country in northern Spain home to 2.1 million people, has usually been related to ancient customs and metallurgy. However, you would be surprised if you asked about its exports.

Lois, Tommy Hilfiger, Dolce Gabbana and many of the best-selling jean firms you can think of get their cloth for their trousers from Tavex, a factory in the Basque town of Bergara. More than 11 million trousers all over the world are made with cloth made by this Basque firm.

It is not only jeans..there ra also guitars or bull's sperm.... The sperm is exported from a farm in Derio, almost 30 million spermatozoa leave the Basque Country in small tubes kept into liquid nitrogen to inseminate cows from distant places such as Mexico, France, Iran or Turkey.

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