The Basque History of the World - Mark Kurlansky [131]
The government administrative system was designed in Paris with the intention of repressing regional cultures, but the Basques have periodically demanded their own Département. In 1836, the Chamber of Commerce in Bayonne, not an especially radical organization, petitioned the king to create a Basque Département, citing economic reasons. “Bayonne has no interest in common with Béarn,” the petition declared. In the 1960s, a growing Basque nationalist movement revived the old demand. In 1981, while campaigning for the presidency, Mitterrand made a list of 110 promises that he intended to fulfill upon taking office, including creation of a Basque Département. Though he surprised cynics by the number of promises he actually did fulfill, a Basque Département was not among them. Once in power, his government discovered, “The situation in Basqueland is very delicate.”
The growing cultural movement, the yearnings being felt from watching the Autonomous Community across the border, seemed to worry Mitterrand. In a 1984 speech in Bayonne, he said: “It is time to say to our Basque compatriots, voilà! That which you would preserve so that future generations find intact the heritage that you received and even improved upon—if it is thought that this could serve as a clever first step from which to leap further, toward autonomy, toward independence, then I say clearly and eye to eye: not with me, no! I will not let the fabric of France be torn.”
IN 1900 A Bordeaux physical education instructor, Philippe Tissié, concluded an essay on Basque sports by speculating on whether Basque culture was about to end. He noted that peasants were moving from rural areas, that “electricity now penetrated to even the smallest village . . . Electricity, telegraph, telephone, automobile, railroad, steam and electric tramways, such are the agents of progress that undermine poetic traditions and turn them into utilitarian prose.”
To that formula could be added radio, television, and computers. What Tissié foresaw was the fate of much of European culture, especially those cultures rooted in rural life. Yet the Basques have survived the twentieth century and ended it in some ways stronger than they were in 1900. This is partly because they have never abandoned their rural roots and they have used modern technology to be closer to them. The Carlist reverence for rural life remains. This is as true of the French Basques as of the Spanish. The French provinces have no real urban centers. The largest, Bayonne, would better be described as a large town. Even the Basque cities of the Spanish side, Pamplona, Vitoria, San Sebastián, and Bilbao, are by contemporary standards small and manageable, and much of the Basque population still lives outside them. Nor is urbanization a Basque trend. Modern communications and good roads have meant increased opportunities for Basques to return to their land.
Traditional farm foods are becoming more popular than they have been for two generations. The spread of cider mills is one example. Pacharán, a light-alcohol drink made from sloe berries, a tiny wild plum from the mountains of northern Navarra, used to be a peasant drink in the mountains but has recently started appearing in bars, restaurants, and homes throughout Basqueland. Bortu gazna, mountain cheese, long the pride of Basque peasants, has also become fashionable in all seven provinces. Ewe’s milk, it seems, like people, develops a stronger character in the face of adversity. The tough grasses and shrubs of the mountaintops produce a more flavorful cheese than that of sheep grazing on lush green valley floors. This cheese can only be produced in May and June, while the valley cheese is made for six months. In a rural society noted for the equal division of labor between sexes, the prestigious mountain cheese is traditionally produced only by men. Part of the mystique of Martikorena, a popular Euskera folk singer and