When I sat up from time to time, I saw that the preparations for the fiesta continued, conducted in a steady, almost mechanical, fashion — each chore presumably passed down over time from father to son and mother to daughter.
We weren’t alone on the seawalls. School was out and the local children gravitated there to sunbake and jump or dive into the port to swim. The water, a fusion of seawater, boat engine oil and fish remnants, was uninviting for us, but didn’t seem to bother them.
We stationed ourselves at a polite distance. The local children seemed intrigued by our foreign ways, and watched when we sunbaked, swam, climbed the rusty ladder, read, chatted and snoozed. They took it all in.
‘Look,’ said Michel. ‘They talk about us.’
The girls our age gazed discreetly, when they thought we wouldn’t notice. But they seemed glad if we did, covering their smiles with their hands when they turned away. They teased each other and soon grew bolder, stealing longer glances.
Michel smiled openly, encouraging them.
‘Extranjeros,’ the local boys reminded the girls. Foreigners. Off limits. We heard that word, extranjeros, a lot, and wondered how far off limits we really were. Michel was keen to find out, Luc too, but Jean-Louis reminded them that Mundaca was, after all, a tight-knit fishing village and the customs were strict. ‘It’s Spain,’ he said. ‘Not France.’
‘So you just hung out?’ said Greg.
‘Not exactly. The swell was dropping and there was no surf at Mundaca. The Frenchmen wanted to try another spot they thought might have waves and invited me along. We headed out after lunch, towards Bermeo.’
Bermeo was a thriving fishing town of about 20,000 people. Its port boasted a large harbour, protected by a long phalanx-like seawall stretching 300 metres out to sea, home to a sizeable fishing fleet. The vessels were ocean-going trawlers of unique design — sturdy, with rounded bow and stern, and painted in the same vibrant blue, red or green, with white Plimsoll lines, neatly berthed in rows across the harbour, resting. You could smell the fish a good distance away.
We traversed Bermeo, quiet now in its siesta lull, via a narrow winding thoroughfare that ran between the many apartment buildings. Shutters were drawn against the strong afternoon heat; the townsfolk bunkered within, to eat and sleep.
The road widened and climbed at the outskirts of the town. Buildings gave way to a patchwork of fields, the shapely haystacks resting, new-cut hay shining bright beside the faded yellow bundles of the previous day’s labours. A shifting breeze created swirling patterns in the remaining uncut grass. We crossed the fields, climbing steadily to a ridge beyond the town where the road twisted and I could glimpse back to see Bermeo, its port, the island of Izaro and, away in the distance, the pale gold cliff of Laga.
‘Wow!’ I said, unable to contain myself. ‘Look at that!’
‘The Basque country,’ said Michel. ‘C’est magnifique, n’est-ce pas?’
Magnificent it was. But there was something else, a magnetic power, and I could feel it drawing me in. For some strange reason I felt right at home.
On the ridge, the road wandered through pine woods, skirting the coast, past the cape, Cabo Machichaco, before regaining the steep coastal edge where the forest thins. The road flattened and descended, always in curves, past a spectacular rugged island that lay close to the shore. A hand-hewn path zigzagged up from its base at the beach to the chapel atop the island’s precarious peak. A large bell sat silent in the bell tower, circled by marauding gulls when they spiralled up from the ocean below.
Baquio sat in a break in the mountain chain on a coastal plain abutting the sea. Its broad beach stretched between rocky headlands from which grew hills that rose to mountains. The village itself was rather dispersed, with the main road running parallel to the beach, but separated from it by a row of modern high-rise holiday apartments. I couldn’t believe it. Another sleepy coastal retreat wrecked by thoughtless development.
A dirt track off the main road led to the beach. We parked near the sand under the shade of a two-storey condominium. The Frenchmen gazed in earnest at the meagre swell, gauging the possibilities. The wind was offshore, the beach deserted, no humans in sight. A set of waves arrived and broke in acceptable patterns.
‘Bonnes vagues!’ said Luc, his brown eyes almost leaping out of his tanned face. He was in his element now, soon to be freed from his cage, restless, ready to pounce.
‘Good waves,’ I agreed. ‘Definitely rideable.’
‘On y va!’ said Michel, throwing the car door open. Feverishly they converged on the boot, climbed into wetsuits and freed their tethered surfboards from the roof. ‘Tiens! Take these!’ said Michel, throwing the keys at me before they sprinted to the water’s edge and catapulted themselves into the sea.
‘Lucky bastards,’ I said to myself.
I stood watching while they launched over the shore-break and paddled rhythmically over the gleaming undulations, out to the farthest reaches of the sandbar. I longed to go with them, to feel the sand around my feet, the invigorating plunge of my head through the first breaking wave, to feel awakened and refreshed on the other side, to feel the stealth of cool water into my wetsuit — that first flush that washed away the clammy half-sweat, then the feel of the gentler, softer water, soft because the skin grows accustomed to the sea’s initial chill. I wanted that baptismal experience, that cool salty submersion that strips away the imperceptible layers of terrestrial life, like the shedding of a reptile’s skin.
‘Oh, God!’ I whispered to the winds.
I longed to be surfing, stroking through the water, the ocean slipping between the splayed fingers of my hands; to feel the rise and fall of the surfboard when it climbs each swell and dips on the other side; to feel the ocean’s rhythm when I glide across its surface. I longed to feel my muscles working and straining. To taste the salt and the breeze, eyes wide open, mind alert, the sound of the wind and the water’s movement, to feel all the senses at work.
And to sit and wait — that simple aesthetic of witnessing and appreciating the natural elements of sea and sky, a time to relax, unwind, reflect, be silent, humble; to feel at one with nature, to feel spiritual.
I felt a prisoner on the beach. I stripped to my shorts and plunged into the sea. The water was brisk and numbing with the bite of the residual winter chill. I couldn’t stay in long, despite the call of the waves. I was skinny and the cold penetrated straight to my bones.
I retreated to the warm sand, sat on my towel and watched. Before long, Jean-Louis gave up and joined me. He was shivering but seemed to sense my frustration immediately. ‘You want to try? Take my board … and, if you want, my wetsuit too.’
He helped me to peel on his dripping suit. I picked up the board and leapt into the sea. Aaaaah! There it was — that wonderful feeling — exhilaration and peace — all in the same moment! Nothing had changed! God, I loved surfing!
I took a few strokes. Something wasn’t quite right. Jean-Louis’s surfboard was so different from mine, the wetsuit was a little too large and my shoulders were weak from prolonged inactivity. I struggled to move the board. Gradually, I gained rhythm and momentum. Before long I was stroking across the water towards the sandbank. Liberated. ‘Unnn-reeeal!’ It was a loud, long holler.
Paddling was one thing but catching a wave was another. I made several attempts, all disastrous. I could see the Frenchmen, all on the beach now, chuckling away. ‘Come on, Owen,’ I urged myself. ‘Get into it.’ Finally I got one, a long one too, right to the shore.
‘You make us laugh in the beginning!’ said Michel, a broad grin beneath his damp moustache. ‘But the last wave … pas mal.’
‘Well, you know, I like to entertain,’ I said.
They laughed and even if they were laughing at me, I didn’t care. I’d been surfing!
‘You must have been stoked, man!’ said Greg.
‘I was! I beamed all the way back to Mundaca … until we reached Bermeo, that is.’
‘What
does “GORA ETA” mean?’ I asked Michel, as we passed graffiti splashed in red paint on one of the tenement building walls on the outskirts of the town.
‘GORA, I don’t know this word, but ETA … you know … the Basque resistance, the guerrillas fighting against General Franco. Ask Jean-Louis. He is our Basque man.’
Jean-Louis grunted softly and examined his hands. ‘GORA means Vive … so in English it means something like “Long live ETA!”‘
‘I’ve never heard of ETA,’ I said.
Michel was incredulous. ‘Really? C’est incroyable!’
Jean-Louis stared at me. ‘Euskadi Ta Askatasuna.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘Basque Homeland and Freedom.’
‘That sounds straightforward.’
‘The concept is. In Spain, the Basques suffer too much because of Franco. Not everyone agrees with ETA methods — bombs, assassinations, extortion — but still, ETA fights against Franco, against the fascists. Don’t you learn about this in Australia, about the Spanish Civil War?’
‘No,’ I confessed. ‘We don’t study the Spanish Civil War. I did mostly science, and the history I learnt was Australian and British.’
‘But surely you read the newspapers?’ said Jean-Louis with a tone of disbelief.
‘Only the sports section. Politics, it’s always about the same things: Vietnam, apartheid and the Whitlam government.’ My father watched the news every night on TV, scouring the papers and discussing it with the neighbour who joined us in the car on the way to work. Gough Whitlam, they said, was turning Australia upside down with reform after reform — Indigenous rights, women’s rights, free university education, health care. He was doing it all, no expense spared.
‘But politics is vitally important.’ There was an edge to Jean-Louis’s voice of unqualified disapproval.
I felt eyes boring into me. ‘Maybe,’ I said defensively. ‘But Australia’s a long way from anywhere and, except for Vietnam perhaps, it doesn’t seem relevant … My neighbour was killed in Vietnam, you know. Eighteen years old, and ambushed by the Viet Cong. The curtains next door were drawn for years and his parents turned to ghosts. That was surreal … It’s different in Europe, history’s visible all around you. Australia isn’t the same. No castles. No signs of war to speak of. The Indigenous history is invisibly woven into nature. Most people don’t know about that and it’s certainly not taught in schools.’
‘Okay.’ He sounded exasperated. ‘But the Spanish Civil War was extremely important. A watershed in history. And for us Basques, a festering wound.’
‘But it finished so long ago,’ I said, half-turning towards him.
‘True.’ Jean-Louis’s voice faltered. ‘But you must understand, the Basques here in Spain have been suffering ever since Franco won the Civil War — since 1939. And, of course, Guernica suffered badly. Bombed to oblivion. That’s a terribly sad story … but everybody knows about Guernica, thanks to Picasso.’
His words rang through me. I didn’t know a bloody thing about Guernica except what I’d seen with my own eyes. Was the famous painting about that little town? It seemed unlikely, but it must be true.
Greg shook his head. ‘Man, I can’t believe you didn’t know about Guernica.’
‘Well, I knew nothing about the history, only my impressions from that first day with Arturo. But it soon took on new meaning.’
‘How so?’ asked Greg.
‘When I met her.’
‘When was that?’
‘That night. After the Baquio surf. After dinner with Maria and Adolfo.’
The Frenchmen led me out of the apartment and into the streets. ‘Come on,’ said Michel. ‘We take you on a vuelta.’
‘What’s that?’
‘We make a tour of the bars, Spanish style! There are twelve in the village, most in the main street and near the port, others scattered about.’
We started at Bar El Puerto. It was curious to watch the locals come and go in groups and take their shots, standing almost nervously at the bar while Carmen poured one long sweep into a line of glasses, rarely spilling a single red drop. The men threw the wine back in one or two draughts, leaving a little in the bottom, and banged down the glasses with a thud. And they didn’t hang about. A minute or two and they were off to the next bar. The fishermen were the quickest, and the quietest, but they had their reasons, not least the early morning rise. Silent and gruff, they dispatched their tintos as if the sea was bearing down on them and this might be their last drink.
‘These fishermen are part of a long and proud Basque tradition of brave, hardy seafarers and navigators,’ said Jean-Louis proudly. ‘Their ancestors fished the seas for centuries, even millennia. They hunted whales in the Bay of Biscay, venturing further and further north for their diminishing prey, even establishing a colony on the Labrador coast of North America.’
‘They got to America?’ I asked, incredulous.
‘Possibly even the United States, and the Caribbean too.’
‘Really? In little boats?’
‘Of course.’
While we watched them, the locals watched us. They gave no outward sign of approval or disapproval, rather a kind of benign curiosity. You could guess when they were talking about us from their quieter tones and awkward gaze.
‘Look at this one!’ said Michel, nudging me, and grinning wickedly. ‘Raul. He look like a turtle.’
Indeed, his limbs hung loose and floppy from his stout trunk, his gait slow and tortuous. His forward-thrust head bobbled on a long, thick neck. He had a bulbous nose, goggle eyes, and guzzled his tinto through thick lips.
They said that Raul was a fixture on the vuelta, circulated alone, and drank with dedication and regularity in every bar. He was mostly quiet and inoffensive, but not this night. He burst into song, or something resembling it, at the top of his voice.
The response was swift. ‘Cállate, Raul! Cállate!’ they yelled. Raul, momentarily hushed, receded into his shell for a bit but it wasn’t long before he was at it again and everyone joined the chorus, ‘Cállate, Raul! Cállate!’
He stopped singing, swayed, appeared as if he might fall over, and staggered out of the bar, hurling slurred insults to one and all. It was hard not to laugh.
We followed a group out of Bar El Puerto to the casino. The cobbled streets were busy with groups of people coming and going, talking loudly.
From the street side, the casino appeared sturdy but on the three sides facing the port, estuary and paseo in turn, a wooden balcony enclosed by tall elegant windows had been constructed on the upper floor, making the building seem top-heavy. But the windows with their white-painted frames lightened the upper level.
‘Iconic,’ said Michel reassuringly.
An icon alright. It had drawn my eye ever since arriving with Arturo.
A dark oak staircase climbed to a landing that led to a long high-ceilinged room enclosed by a second wall of glass. Inside sat a dozen or so round tables with pristine white tablecloths, each with half a dozen handsome chairs and a long polished table for formal gatherings. The floor-to-ceiling drapes were tied back to allow entrance to the enclosed balcony through the inner glass doors where light streamed in. Here were smaller tables, where you could sit and enjoy the sun, or view the port, the river mouth, the church and the paseo.
The atmosphere was quieter, and more refined. The Frenchmen were right at home. ‘So,’ said Michel with a cheeky grin. ‘Did you enjoy making le surf today?’
‘Of course,’ I replied coolly. I could see where this was going.
‘It was interesting to watch you,’ said Michel, his grin widening. ‘At first I say to Luc, “My mother can surf better than him!”‘
Here we go, I thought.
‘And Luc said that his grand-mère could surf better than you!’
They laughed and I chewed on a smile.
‘And you caught that last wave and we say, “Now he begins!”’
A group of girls caught our eye. They watch
ed us, talking rapidly and smiling. The Frenchmen puffed out their chests and, almost in a blink, Michel was by their sides, chatting in Spanish. Luc and Jean-Louis followed, but I stood slightly adrift, watching on.
The girls were mostly dark-haired, dark-eyed, and vivacious. Once they got going, I began to appreciate Spanish women’s reputation for fire and passion. I was drawn in, irresistibly. Their eyes, mouths, faces, hands, mannerisms, postures were a whirl of movement. Everything sizzled.
One girl, fairer and quieter than the others, turned my way. She had a shapely mouth, a slightly upturned nose and captivating, light-filled, sea-green eyes. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked cautiously.
I was taken aback, not expecting to hear English. ‘Owen. And yours?’
‘Maite.’ She smiled gently, then looked away, smoothing back her long brown hair with slim delicate hands, revealing two large gold earrings.
‘My … tay,’ I repeated. ‘That’s an unusual name. Is it Spanish?’
She turned back, her reserve cast aside. ‘It’s a traditional name,’ she said proudly.
‘Oh, I see. I’m afraid I haven’t been here long.’
She appeared bemused.
‘But I love what I’ve seen so far,’ I continued. ‘This village, the coast, the countryside. It’s incredibly beautiful. The people seem so friendly. And the Basque culture and history, what I know of it, are fascinating.’
‘It is beautiful,’ she said, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. ‘And we Basques are proud of our country, our tradition.’
‘You’re Basque!’
‘Yes. Where are you from?’
‘Australia,’ I replied. ‘Melbourne.’
She nodded.
‘Where did you learn your English?’ I asked.
‘Dublin. I was there six months, studying. I’m an art student.’
Mundaca: A Tale of Intrigue, Romance and Surfing in Franco's Spain Page 5
