The Basque History of the World - Mark Kurlansky [83]
THE BASQUES WERE still fighting. Rementeria went back to defend Bilbao. “Everybody thinks it was over with Guernica but it wasn’t There were a lot of fronts, we went to them and fought on.”
In the rubble that was Guernica at the end of April 1937, the ancient stone bridge over the river remained intact, as did a few archways in the center of town. The rest was blackened heaps and collapsing walls. But at the edge of town where the mountains begin, a pillared nineteenth-century building still stood, with a straight oak tree in front. In the days after the bombing hundreds of homeless survivors, mostly women, gathered in front of the oak, sleeping on mattresses soaked from the effort to put out the fires. George Steer and other correspondents listened to their stories. “They conversed in tired gestures and words unnaturally short for Spain,” Steer later reported. “And they made the funny noises of bombers poising, fighters machine-gunning, bombs bursting, houses falling, the tubes of fire spurting and spilling over the town. Such was the weary, sore-eyed testimony of the people of Guernica, and it was only later that people who were never in Guernica thought of other stories to tell.”
The pillared building with the oak tree in front of it are both still standing. Farther up the mountain, Juan José Rementeria can see the top of the tree from his apartment window.
Among the mysteries surrounding the attack is the question: Why Guernica? Many believe it was because of its symbolic importance. Yet the oak was not touched. Some theorize that the Requetés, the Navarrese troops, had asked the command not to damage that place. Or maybe it was just missed because it was at the edge of town. Maybe the Germans, not knowing Basque history, thought it was just a tree.
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10: The Potato Time
Silent and antisocial, if the Basques want to communicate with others, they sing.
—Pío Baroja, FANTASÍAS VASCAS
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THE BASQUES HUNG ON, dug in around Bilbao, fiercely and futilely defending every foot of ground. Unlike the Carlist sieges of the last century, little olive oil was left, nor was milk or meat. The only plentiful food was Mexican chick peas. In the old Basque tradition, Bilbao controlled the import of Mexican chick peas for all of Spain and when war broke out the warehouses were packed with the nation’s supply.
A British destroyer flotilla based in St. Jean-de-Luz, careful not to compromise neutrality by carrying any implements of war, tried to bring food into the city. The Basque government procured a supply of grain and started making state bread, a heavy, bitter, dark bread which offered a maximum of nutrition by including all parts of the grain. The Basques were not accustomed to this type of dark whole wheat bread and it was popularly believed to be toxic. Among the alleged side effects, it was said to cause miscarriages in pregnant women and madness in men. But the tenday food ration was a pound of rice, a pound of chick peas, a pound of vegetables, and a half pound of cooking oil per person. Bilbao was crowded with refugees from the cities and towns already destroyed. Not only Guernica and Durango but Eibar, Munguia, Muxica, Elgeta, Markina, Bolibar, Arbacegui, Yurre, Castillo y Eleijabeitia, Amorebieta, Lemona, Fika, Rigoitia, and Galdakano had all been destroyed or seriously damaged from bombing. Many of the survivors had fled to Bilbao.
According to George Steer, domestic cats became a source of meat. It had long been rumored that cat was a peacetime delicacy in the poorest neighborhoods of Bilbao. Steer even supplied the following recipe:
First, the cat was caught, then laid in salt for twenty-four hours, then basted. A magnificent sauce of sherry and mushrooms and various spices was then prepared to drown the last carnivorous flavors of pussy, and the whole was said to resemble jugged hare, and even in the case