Basque Country Travels: The Condors and the Tree (3)
JohnM
-- Go to the site below for pix of the tree et al --
8. Zortzi
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[I am quite fond of the ablatives: the terminal ('until - up to)
and the normal, used to denote 'from'. 'For instance 'arbola' is
'tree' and 'etzea' is 'house' 'From the house to the tree' is in
Euskara 'etzetik arboleraino' using first the normal and then the
terminal ablative. Compact, eh?]
I got up very tired in the morning. Luis lived in a block of flats
only ten minutes away, but I still didn't come home until four
o'clock, and I woke up at nine to catch the small local train to
the fishing village of Bermeo.
The train to Guernika/Bermeo moves along the course of a river,
under an orgy of vegetation; chestnut and oak trees, lemons and
pines everywhere with every trunk and branch covered in moss, ivy
and other woody climbers. This is the most verdant part of Spain,
I kept reminding myself - and due to the terrorism and the
resulting industrial decline, plus EC competition in traditional
occupations like fishing, one of the most dilapidated. Rundown
factories, deserted stations and boarded houses were the relics of
economic recession all the way to Guernika. This is the landscape
the Guggenheim museum is called upon to change.
The train had stopped for ages at a red signal outside the village
of Amorebieta. The driver apparently decided to jump the red light
and force his way through. What happened next was predictable. The
train was shunted and stopped on top of a crumbling iron bridge
over a canal. The power didn't return for another fifteen hairy
minutes...
The area between Guernika and Bermeo is part of the Urdaibai
Reserve, the most important in the Basque country, with marshes
and wetlands which serve as a bird sanctuary. It's one of the only
places in Western Europe where you don't have to free mink from
fur farming cages; they roam free. Not that I saw any from the
train, of course, though it does run through the reserve;
something unthinkable in Britain. But the white egrets I saw
wading by the tracks seemed unperturbed, a reminder that modern
trains, unlike cars and their accompanying motorways, are highly
eco-friendly.
Bermeo is one of the most picturesque Basque fishing villages in
the Bay of Biscay; indeed, I found it, like Bilbao very Portuguese
in character. Unlike Mediterranean Spain, but so much like
Portugal, the scene is noticeable by the conspicuous green hills
sloping all the way down to the sea. I had a stroll by the harbour
and its wave breakers and, to my great satisfaction I spotted my
first ever European shag. And this time, I do mean the bird.
Bermeo was so quite. I walked around during the afternoon siesta
and was stared at intensely by a group of old Basques, complete
with black berets, the txapelas, who were sitting in the shade.
Such nice and peaceful people and yet, so much blood and passion.
It is as if they live their life like a boiling pot filled to the
brim, where the slightest disturbance from its equilibrium will
cause it to overflow hissing and steaming and spoil the meal. And
you'll never know when tempers will boil over.
I read in the paper that, while I was hanging out with Boris and
later on with Luis, a man in his 50s lost an eye in a scuffle at
two o'clock in the morning - in the Lower Arriaga side, just like
José had predicted. According to reports, he was verbally dressing
down some balaclava'd youths who were burning tyres and
motorcycles with the moral authority that comes with age and the
boldness which comes from too much drink. As usually happens with
these matters, when the police arrived, there were no youths and
he refused to make a statement. "There was a fracas and I got a
stray punch in the eye", said instead. No, he did not see his
assailants. His evidence was being contradicted by other witnesses
and the police were still interrogating him in hope that he can
name his attackers - poor guy, now he must be scared to death.
Time for the depressing story I promised.
When the 1979 referendum was accepted with a vote of 80% (though
on a turnout of 61%) and decentralisation started, most
nationalists (most notably the moderate Partido Nacional Vasco)
accepted that at last, with Franco dead, a Basque regional
government with wide powers in place and Europe looming, the time
for violence was over. ETA and Herri Batasuna, its political wing,
rejected the arrangement as a sell-out.. As with any
nationalist/terrorist organisation, from the PLO to the IRA, when
a form of political settlement arrives, it splits the organisation
to the political theorists who, however extreme merge into a new
political arena, and the hard-line irreconcilable militants who
have lived too long by bombing and hatred to settle down. We saw
that in Northern Ireland very sharply with the emergence of the
Real IRA and the Omagh bombing after the Good Friday agreement.
And so, the campaign of terror went on, unabated and unforgivable,
sliding into depths of horror which no ideology can justify.
People who may have previously supported ETA's fight against
General Franco were appalled with the selective assassination of
political opponents. In 1997, seven local councillors from the
governing right-wing People's Party were assassinated. In one
case, the replacement of the dead councillor undertook his duties
in the full knowledge that his life was in danger. He was shot
soon afterwards. ETA went on blindly alienating everyone: a
bombing in Barcelona killed 21 innocent people and support for
what was seen as a fellow nationalist movement died in Catalunya.
Bombings in Mediterranean resorts horrified the Spanish who depend
on tourism for a living.
Just when you thought things could not get worse, they did. ETA
dragged their opponents down with them. A 'dirty war' started
between ETA and the Spanish State with high-level government
ministers called on to account for abuse of power and
circumventing the democratic process. In 1997 the entire
leadership of Herri Batasuna was sent to jail for aiding
terrorists because they showed an electoral video where masked men
belonging to ETA were allowed to express their ideology. In 1998
the ex-minister of the interior, José Barrionuevo was jailed for
his part in the 80s 'dirty war'. Disinvestment, insecurity and
unemployment in the Basque provinces led to disaffected youth
which led to a growing disenchantment with the Spanish State.
France was drawn in. Exiled ETA leaders operating from France,
received political asylum during Franco's years, but they were now
starting to be monitored closely. In July 1987, after a threat to
the Tour de France, the French outlawed their own ETA equivalent
(Iparretarrak, meaning : 'The Northerners'), Finally, in 1992
three ETA leaders were arrested and expelled to Spain. There
seemed to be no place to hide any more.
Sinn Fein and the IRA, close friends with HB and ETA, seem to have
persuaded the latter to declare a truce. There have been other
cease-fires in the past: most notably in 1988 which led to talks
in Algiers - they broke up soon after. Another one in 1996, lasted
only a week. The current government of José María Aznar, with a
Basque surname himself, seems to be reluctant to believe ETA's
motives - and a burning down of the Socialist Party's HQ in San
Sebastian (a city with a Socialist mayor) two weeks after the
ceasefire was announced, seems to confirm those suspicions. ETA's
Youth organisation, Jarrai, who carried out the attack, had
denounced the ceasefire and claimed that 'all forms of struggle
are still legitimate for the Basque youth'. It is still Asterix
versus the Romans except that now the struggle is indiscriminate
and blind and the Romans is everybody else...
It is apt for a people who identify with Asterix and the Celts to
worship a tree. It is an oak tree in the city of Guernika. It is
there that the Kings of Navarre and Spain came to swear to uphold
the Basque fueros. The old tree, now dead, is surrounded by a
small pillared dome. The current tree, surrounded by a fence and
guarded by a soldier, is a direct descendant of the old oak and it
was planted in 1860 from one of its branches. The Basque national
anthem, composed by Iparraguirre, is called itself Gernikako
arbola meaning Guernika's Tree (notice the ako - the genitive
locative).
Both trees are in the gardens of the neo-classical regional
Assembly House (Casa de Juntas) The original general assemblies
were held in the shadow of the Old Tree (no overpopulation then)
and the swearing took place in a nearby church. The current
Assembly House where the Plenary meetings of the local Congress of
Biscay are held dates from the 1820s and stands on the place of
the original church. It is a church-parliament retaining the altar
and holy water fountain from the old days. Over the speaker's
chair, there is a picture of The Oak Tree. It is not me who
capitalises the tree, BTW; the Basques themselves do so, in their
English and Spanish translations.
There is a stone altar with its Greek pillars behind the oak tree,
the Tribunal. It has the arms of the seven Basque counties.
'Zazpiak Bat' - The Seven Are One - as the one of the nationalist
graffiti slogans says. The Presidents of the autonomous Basque
government, whatever their political persuasion and the regional
council still come to the Tribune, in front of the Tree to take
the oath of office. And in case something should happen, a new
sapling has been growing since 1979 on the other end of the
Assembly House.
Simon Bolívar was born a few villages from here. It is fitting
that a Basque revolutionary with a Clintonesque libido should
liberate South America from the hated Spaniards; it is perhaps
even more fitting for a continent with operetta politics that he
was aided by the bastard son of an Irish settler (Bernardo O'
Higgins) and an Argentinian hypochondriac (José de San Martín). A
bit further away is the birth place of Ignacius Loyola, the other
person who has shaped South America, through the order of Jesuits
which he founded. I was ready to go to his birthday celebrations
on August 31st, but I was wrong: his birthday was on the 31st of
JULY - my memory is not what it used to be.
But it is not because of the Tree, the Assembly House or its
famous sons that the ordinary punter in The Globe (and this time I
mean the pub in Baker Street) knows of Guernika. It is, of course,
because of the Picasso painting. And if ever there was a single
painting to symbolise our century this is the one.
It is because of the painting that we never forget that during the
Spanish Civil war on Monday the 26th of April 1937, market day,
between the hours of 16:30 and 19:30 the first experiment in
civilian saturation bombing took place. The pilots of the German
Condor League of bomber planes in aid of Franco's troops, bombed
this village of 7,000 people indiscriminately. To top it all, the
pilots flew low and shot the fleeing civilians with their machine
guns. They left 1,000 dead and 70% of the houses destroyed in a
foretaster of the World War that was to come.
Contrary to popular belief, Guernika was not the first town to be
raided by airplanes. Nearby Durango had the dubious distinction on
two occasions: on the 31st of March and the 2nd of April 1937,
three weeks before Guernika. The difference is that Picasso
decided to paint a huge 3.5mx7.8m oil canvas in black and white
(although the blacks seem almost bluish in their hue) inspired by
the bombing of the Basque holy city. On the canvas, the triumphant
bull, the injured horse and the terrified woman symbolise the
struggle between brutal force and popular resistance. In the New
York Metropolitan museum until the restoration of democracy in
Spain (which Picasso did not see, as he died in 1973), it is now
in the Museum of the Reina Sofia in Madrid which was built solely
to house this painting. When the Guggenheim museum was
inaugurated, the Basque government asked for the loan of the
painting which meant so much to the Basques. The Spanish
government refused - the painting, it said, had already travelled
a lot and any more journeys would affect it adversely.
There is a museum of the bombing in Guernika. I saw some rare
photos and watched a video made after the restoration of democracy
with harrowing eye-witness accounts. With me were a father and his
teenage son. The father was bored and fidgety, but his son was
transfixed; twice he refused to leave, and like me, watched the
film to the end - to his father's consternation. By far the most
chilling item was a Franco propaganda newsreel which showed the
destruction caused by the bombs claiming it was the Basque forces
themselves who were responsible, pursuing a policy of 'scorched
earth'. To add insult to injury, history was reinvented. The rest
of Spain did not know of the bombing and no one was allowed to
talk or write about it in the Basque country for decades to come.
In case you ever wondered 'why Guernika' ? 'why this particular
village ?' - well, now you know. It was a symbolic attack which in
turn through Picasso has became a symbol itself of the civilian
suffering of our century. And although it maimed and killed and
burned and destroyed, the German Condor League miraculously did
not touch the Tree.
If there is still stuff legends are made of, I was looking at it.
JohnM
--------------------- Football Comments # 71 ----------------------
"I can see the carrot at the end of the tunnel" Stuart Pearce
Web site http://www.scroll.demon.co.uk/spaver.htm
Basque Travels in http://www.scroll.demon.co.uk/vasco/vasco.htm