Basque Walks

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Basque Walks


The stocky woman in knee high rubber boots waved a red rag at the passing traffic. On this rural road traffic was hardly worth noticing, a farm truck, a car every five or ten minutes. There were more pilgrims than cars.
She was moving sheep back to the farm after their summer pasturage in the mountains.

The Chemin de St. Jacques de Compostello crosses back and forth on the road where the farm woman guided the flock with the help of a dog. A man and teenaged boy, possibly the husband and son of the traffic stopping woman, herded the black faced latxa sheep across the road. Other areas of Basque Fance the sheep are Manex, white face.

We pilgrims on foot stopped and stared at the Transhumance, the ancient Basque ritual of transferring the flocks from high Pyrenees to the shelter of the family farmstead. The two males rode on a tractor covering one flank of the herd while a dog managed strays on the other side. The woman managed traffic, the gates and brought up in the rear.

The Basque homeland for some 3 million people is a vee wedge of land in the neck of the Iberian peninsula, with the Bay of Biscay to the north and west, the Pyrenees to the south and east. Euskal Herria stretches across south western France and Northern Spain.

The old names transcend modern national frontiers. Navarra is the largest province with the capital Pamplona famous for the bull runs on the feast of Saint Fermin, focused on a weeklong festival in July. Each morning a half dozen bulls run to the arena where they will be used in spectator fights. The runners scramble ahead of the bulls, resulting in deaths -- humans in the streets, bulls in the arena. Fermin was a bishop born in Pamplona in the 3rd century and known as the patron of bullfights.

Basse Navarre is a Basque province north of the Pyrenees in France. Soule and Labourd are the other two Frenh provinces. Other Basque provinces inside Spain’s borders: Alava, Vizcaya, Guipuzcoa. The mouth moving syllables indicate the special demands of Huskal. The ancient Basque languge was spoken some 5,000 years ago, long before the tongues that formed English spread to these regions of the pre-Latinate Gauls.

Sheep, vineyards orchards and forests supported the people for millenea. Still the farmers move the flocks on the seasonal rotation. The pilgrimage path extended south from St. Jean Pied de Port towards the border when our impromptu clutch of pilgrims paused to watch the family move sheep down from the mountains. It was late September and time to shelter the ewes and lambs for the winter. The river of sheep pranced across the pilgrimage path, snaking out of one gate, clipping across the asphalt and through the open gate to the pasture and barn on the other side of the road. The woman secured the gates, fluttered the red flag and strode over to the tractor where the men waited inside the fence. A well orchestrated transfer practiced for many years, there was a choriographed beauty to the movements.

The sheep produce milk which is made into the distinctive Basque cheese. During summer, families milk the sheep up in the hills where each family maintains a summer sheep hut, the txabola. The curds are pressed into wheels and brought down for sale at the end of the pastural season. Farms are open to guests now, to bring in cash. Tourists buy cheese and wine and other farmstead produced products. T

Sure, I saw grafiti painted initials ETA which stands for Euskadi ta Askatasuna (Basque Homeland and Freedom). Symbols that employ the red white and green of the national flag range from tee shirts to netting on bridal favors and rear view mirror decorations. Even the red geraniums with green leaves in white window boxes note national fidelity.

The origins of the nationalist resistance movement date to the pre world war II era. Franco invited Hitler’s air force to try out their weapons and techniques on Gernika. Heinkel-111 bombers and Messerschmitt-109’s droned overhead and obliberated the town on a market day in 1937. A disinformation campaign by Franco blamed the Basques for the attack, promoting the preposterous idea to the gullible that Basques had killed their own to give the appearance of an attack by Franco. The propaganda swept the country into further tumult against the Basques.

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