Sakoneta, Flysch de Zumaia, spectacular sea cliffs, rock beach, brooding sky, scuttling crabs.
This is one of most amazing geological formations I’ve ever seen. These vertical layers run for 8 kilometres along the Basque coast, each a rock page, forming a book covering 60 million years of planet’s history. Created when Iberia crashed into Europe and things went all squishy.
(I also learnt here crab in Basque is karramarro).
Official stamp of the Basque border town of Hondarribia, dated 1335, showing the hunting of a Right Whale (Ballena de los vascos in Spanish). With local whales decimated by the end of the Middle Ages, Basque whalers found new population off Newfoundland, reaching these territories by the early C16th or even before.
Image Wikipedia
First page of 18th century Basque-Icelandic dictionary. A Basque-Icelandic pidgin was spoken between locals and Basque whalers from ~1600 including the well-known expression “Fenicha for ju” meaning F**k you! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque%E2%80%93Icelandic_pidgin
Katagorri, a lovely word in Basque for squirrel. (Also Urtxintx)
Ardilla in Spanish, Esquirol in Catalan. EsquÃo in Galicia
📷Fischer.H (Wikipedia)
Many years ago, an old anarchist bookseller from the Raval assured me that squirrel was the most delicate meat he had ever eaten. Nowadays, it is better to let them play in the trees.
There’s a song from the 1960s:
Nik ere nahi nuke
Izan urtxintxak bezala
Hain gora, hain trebe,
Izaiteko libre
I, too, would like To be like the squirrels— So high up, so agile— To be free.
Aitor, a friend on social media, a Basque doctor commented:
It’s a song from my childhood, when our language was banned, Franco ruled with an iron fist and freedom was to be achieved yet. We wanted to be like squirrels. A song for children with a deep meaning