Spain at its intoxicating best
Frank Barrett tours the north of the nation, drinking in the delights of the Rioja wine region and the beautiful Basque Country
ONCE upon a time people used to talk about wanting to visit the ‘real’ Spain. What they meant was that while areas such as the Costa del Sol and Costa Blanca were certainly in Spain, they had begun to resemble a caricature It’s A Knock Out world of wacky English bars and German sausage shops into which Iberian life barely intruded. For holidaymakers in Torremolinos, for example, discovering the ‘real’ Spain involved a coach trip to the white villages or to the Alhambra in Granada with a folkloric flamenco show thrown in for good measure.
Despite the fact that there have long been ferry services from Plymouth and Portsmouth to Santander and Bilbao, Spain’s northern coast – the Costa Verde – has never become a major destination. ‘Spain with rain’ was how someone disparagingly described it to me.
Northern Spain, however, is not a pale imitation of the south, it is another world entirely – rich in scenery (its steepling Picos de Europa mountains rank as one of Europe’s most picturesque places), culture and intriguing historic cities.
In the wake of this month’s awful events in Nice, it’s worth remembering that the Basque Country, which takes up the eastern half of northern Spain, long struggled to survive under the dark shadow of terrorism carried out by separatist group ETA. Their actions did not just divert tourists away from the Basque Country itself but depressed visitor numbers and investment to the whole of the north.
At a time of almost relentless bad news, it’s a pleasure to bring good news from the Basque Country. Five years ago peace was declared and the question of independence now seems to have slipped away. The owner of a local restaurant told me last month that Basques now had other more important worries: ‘We want jobs. Young people want a future.’
Not many years ago you didn’t have to travel too far from Bilbao, the de facto capital of the Basque Country, for evidence of the separatists’ campaign. Any road signs, for example, which used the official Castilian spelling for local place names were roughly obliterated by spray paint.
The region’s Basque heritage is now much more in evidence. Signs no longer point the way to the town of Guernica – it is identified solely by its Basque spelling of Gernika.
Nobody is sure about the origins of the Basque language – it may have roots in Caucasian Georgia. But what is certain is that many Basque words (full of Zs, Xs and Ks) look like a collection of bad Scrabble hands. Outside the cities of San Sebastian and Bilbao, Guernica is the one place instantly recognised around the world. What has guaranteed its immortality is not so much the event that inspired a painting, but the painting itself.
Next April will mark the 80th anniversary of the day in 1937 when a squadron of German and Italian aircraft bombed Guernica’s defenceless population. It provided a chilling foretaste of the horrors of the Second World War (the London Blitz began three years later).
An excellent museum in the town tells the story of the brutal and unex- pected attack and its place in the Spanish Civil War which saw the defeat of the Republicans and the rise of Franco. Had it not been for the presence in Guernica of British journalist George Steer, the real story of the atrocity might never have been told.
STEER’S report and the photographs caught Pablo Picasso’s attention and persuaded him to make the bombing the subject of a major painting which he had been asked to display at the Paris International Exposition in 1937. The symbolic work came to represent the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and war in general. Picasso refused to allow his painting to be seen in Spain while Franco was alive, but after the dictator’s death in 1975 it became possible to bring it home: eventually Guernica ended up in the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid (there has been some pressure to give the painting a permanent home at Bilbao’s Guggenheim – but most agree the work is too fragile to move again). There is an excellent reproduction on a wall in the centre of Guernica.
Later this year a new film, Gernika, will tell the story of the bombing.
The north of the country features
much of the best of Spain. It has the best of the wine – Rioja; the best food; and the best scenery. The lushness of the hills and valleys of the countryside between the Pyrenees and the Picos de Europa is breathtaking. In the upper hills, bears and wolves still roam, while eagles soar overhead. And the area is rich in unexpected delights which you can only really discover with a car. My car rental booking company, Holiday Autos, made it easy to check the best deals.
After a 30-minute drive from Bilbao, you plunge deep into remote countryside. After venturing over a narrow bridge so old and mysterious you expected to encounter a troll feasting on billy goats gruff, we found ourselves outside a ‘fairytale’ estate. A handwritten sign in Spanish warned that dogs were loose on the property, adding, just in case anyone needed reminding: ‘Dogs bite.’
The sign was at the entrance to Loizaga Tower, a Sleeping Beauty castle that turned out not to be harbouring a somnolent princess but one of the world’s largest collections of vintage Rolls-Royces – 45 in total. There’s probably a good reason why they’re here, and why the museum is open only on Sundays, but none of this is explained. Even more mysterious is how the cars made it over that rickety bridge.
Further inland lies the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz, the scene of the Duke of Wellington’s famous triumph over the Napoleonic French army in June 1813.
In the old cathedral is a great collection of religious effigies: the figures have a disturbingly lifelike appearance.
We spent a fascinating night in the castellated Hotel Castillo El Collado in Laguardia, at the heart of Rioja wine country. A short drive away is the Frank Gehry-designed Marques de Riscal hotel – a pocket-size version of his Bilbao Guggenheim.
On the drive to our final stop in San Sebastian, we paused at Pamplona, which was in full preparation for the annual bull-running festival. It used to attract serious students of bull-fighting such as Ernest Hemingway, who began the tourist rush here with his novel The Sun Also Rises. Now it seems to be mainly popular with budget travellers from the Antipodes and South Africa.
San Sebastian, Spain’s most elegant seaside resort, is the polar opposite – full of smart hotels (we stayed in the excellent filmthemed Astoria7) and Michelinstarred restaurants. San Sebastian was where Spanish royals used to spend summer to escape the torrid Madrid heat.
There may be better places to while away the dog days of summer, but I would be hard put to think of one.