Europe @ 2.4 km/h (44 page)

As Andorra disappeared in the rear-vision mirror of the minibus it dawned on me that, were I to pass this way five years from now, two nations along my route through Europe — this co-principality and Belgium — might have disappeared. But only Belgium’s doomsday scenario was being bruited abroad. Andorra, the only high country in south-western Europe, is perched on a precipice. For the rest of our road, Philip’s thoughts were a closed book but I couldn’t help wondering if there was a word in any language — Catalan best of all — for an avalanche without snow.

NORTHERN IBERIA (NORTHERN SPAIN, NORTHERN PORTUGAL)

Time spent in country: 15 days

Distance covered: 3256 km

Distance pushed: 165.2 km

Average speed: 3.044 km/h

Journey distance to date: 24,209 km

Whenever I thought of Spain I saw blood. The blood of Aztecs and Incas shed by the conquistador, the sacred blood that true believers adore. The blood of the matador, blood of the bull. Tomatoes drying under a vermilion sun. The red of the Spanish Socialist rose. The blood of priests shed by Republicans, the same colour in the end as that of the democrats shed by Fascists. Innocents’ blood spilt by al-Qa’eda on 11 March 2004, a murderous act of racism (blamed on ETA) that galvanised Spain into giving its marching orders to a Government that had marched troops off to Iraq … to shed blood. None of this blood would be avenged.
³⁷
Rich is the mixture that flows in Spanish veins, bled dry — in a single horrifying year of ‘ethnic cleansing’ — of the blood of Muslims and Jews (many of whose descendants now howl for one another’s). The pain is so expunged that on both sides of the Atlantic they celebrate an
annus
horribilis
, 1492 — the year when Christopher Columbus set sail for a better world than this. Though, in the end, for all the gain (the loot and plunder, the shame on Spain), his expeditions only spread the stain.

But this, I hear you protest, is too grim a picture — and of course you are right. Where are the fiestas, guitars and siestas, tapas and paellas? Bring on the flamenco dancers, open up the bodegas, rock on the Costa del Sol. Barcelona remembers its Olympic party, forgets the stadium ‘executions’. Who gives a damn? You only live once.

At Buchenwald and in Gamvik, not to forget Versailles, we have seen how the refinements of civilisation are to be found alongside the most barbarous savagery. But here’s a difference between the Iberian neighbours: while Portugal has repudiated its past, Spain has quite literally buried its own. Six hundred mass graves from civil war times are said to exist, unvisited, unmarked and largely unknown. A people who once crossed oceans now refuse to look under their feet.

The Pyrenees, which isolate Iberia from the rest of the Continent, have made Spaniards and Portuguese seem less typical of Europe — with all its sanguinary spirit — than they really are. Even today it is possible to write, ‘… the Spanish, like the British, sometimes refer to Europe as if it were somewhere else’.
³⁸

On this very journey I witnessed a small but perfectly formed example of such provincialism — cultural apartheid, if you prefer — which keeps the various peoples of the Continent in their ‘little boxes’, inhibiting the creation of a really unified Europe. The episode will sound trivial, but is worth pondering. A Spanish family were taking breakfast in a hostel north of the border. The five-year-old boy saw a plate of croissants and was clearly tempted. Seeing this, Papa shook his head in stern disapproval and, if I understood correctly, was saying, ‘No. They are not normal.’ It took a few seconds to realise that he didn’t mean they were stale but, rather, ‘They are not what we have for breakfast.’

To outsiders, Portugal and Spain have long looked exotic, inward-looking and obsessed with their own affairs to the point of ignoring the rest of the Continent. This was the image the Iberian ‘brothers’ projected when they went one way under Fascist dictatorships while the rest of Western Europe was going in the opposite, liberal democratic, direction. It was the image they projected in the middle of the last millennium when the two Great Powers of Europe persuaded the Pope of the day
³⁹
to apply the wisdom of Solomon and divide up the world between them, half and half. (You can’t say fairer than that.) The image was always part illusion. Scientists and artists, pilgrims and poets were ever more far-sighted than politicians — they generally are — and, although the Pyrenees stand between Iberia and the rest of the Continent, the trails and passes over the mountains are ancient and well worn.

My first Spanish landfall being in the Basque Country, many here would say I am not in Spain at all. The famous people of ‘defeated nations’ go unrecognised beyond their borders. Who knows the name of the first person to circumnavigate the globe? That honour belongs to a Basque — Sebastian Elcano
⁴⁰
— but often goes instead to Ferdinand Magellan, his commanding officer, who got himself killed in the Philippines.

Proudly independent Basques see the Spanish as the Spanish used to see themselves — conquerors on horseback,
a caballo
, carrying the sword of self-styled righteousness in one hand and the Bible in the other. They see less of Cervantes’ Don Quixote — the fanciful daydreaming Spaniard who gets stereotyped by Anglo-Saxons, even to this day, as lazy, feckless and undisciplined.

Basque and Catalan nationalists see the Castilian knights of Spain much as Cuban and Filipino nationalists saw them until a new conquistador, the United States, drove them away at the end of the 19th century.

Yet in South America, earlier in the century, Madrid had bowed to the spirit of independence in other nations far from the Spanish mainland. There is much to admire in the Spanish spirit, even as one recognises the love of liberty for one people can go hand in hand with a dark desire to enslave others.

One state or contending nationalities? Spain’s predicament over Catalan and Basque autonomy mirrors that of Europe in relation to its member nations. The Basques have their story, the Catalans theirs. They see themselves on the receiving end of Spanish history. The Spaniards — they are the ones on horseback — inevitably draw a different lesson. If everyone in his own way is right, no wonder the European is an endangered species.

1310-1319 km

Even a simple thing, such as where your train from the border town of Hendaye is bound, can become a complicated issue in the Basque lands. You say San Sebastián, they say Donostia. Within five minutes you’re reminded in the friendliest possible way that respect for the local people demands you speak their language, not the occupier’s. Believe me, I was going to. Regrettably, the beautiful Basque word for ‘thank you’ —
keskarikasco
— is not easily committed to memory. For best effect, divide it up into syllables. Kess-curry-kuss-koe. Even on the third day here, I find myself mumbling, Keskasa — , Kerikas — , Keskica … The Basques are invariably amused; effort counts for more than result. A train passenger, eager to acquaint me better with this orphan in the family of languages, grabs my notebook and scribbles other useful phrases in it —
agur
for
adios
(for goodbye);
kaixo
for ¡hola! (hello);
silla de
ruedas
(wheelchair), this last one the Spanish term. For such a helpful gift of words I just can’t thank her enough … or, at least, well enough … in Basque.

And still the Vikings pressed southwards, overrunning the Cantabrian coast before the first millennium was out. In Basque eyes the Spaniards are just the latest in a long line of invaders stretching back to the Phoenicians and Romans. Today they come from all directions, descending on the Playa de la Concha (but only in summer, I note with satisfaction). The Beach of the Shell may be less extensive than Broome’s Cable Beach but its perfect scallop shape makes it unquestionably the most beautiful strip of sand I have ever laid eyes on.

A three-hour search fails to turn up anywhere I can stay. All the
pensións
here are on upper floors. Press the buzzer out front and, if the owner is in, you will be lucky if he or she speaks English. And then, of course, you need goodwill more than luck. Just as the odds are shortening on the prospect of a night in the cold outdoors, the owners of a family-run
pensión
with a lift to their first-floor rooms come to my rescue. The couple’s English-speaking son, John — he prefers the English name to Juan — is a law student. Filled with youthful zeal about the Basques’ national rights, he tells me that to achieve nationhood any people must have three things: language, culture and territory. ‘And for us the third will come.’

In a tapas bar tonight all discussion is dominated by the public spat between King Juan Carlos and Hugo Chavez at a conference in South America. The Venezuelan leader accused the king of siding with Fascist sympathisers — he named former Spanish PM José Maria Aznar — at which point the irascible old monarch told him, ‘Shut up.’ Basque nationalists — predictably — are impressed by Chavez’s chutzpah; Spanish nationalists regard him as a buffoon.

1323-1327 km

Nerea, the waitress at Sidreria Donostiarra restaurant, squirts ‘hard cider’ from the barrel (though, having imbibed it, I think ‘easy cider’ would be a more fitting description). After I’ve bought the cheapest entree on the menu — a delicious cod omelette that should have cost me €7 but that the house reduced to €3 — the chef offers me a complimentary steak, pleading that the omelette was smaller than normal. I can’t help noticing that the steak takes up the same proportion of the plate as the egg-and-fish dish — 100 per cent.

On this dismally wet day the
pensión
is full up, and I am back on the street searching for a night’s lodging. At the risk of being mistaken for a beggar, I even approach strangers for guidance. ‘Have you tried Urban House?’ says one. On the first floor of a residential block, this
hostal
is so laid-back you wouldn’t know it’s there. The management of this latter-day hippie haven is laid-back, too. Most of the time you can’t see the NO SMOKING signs for the smoke.

1334-1337 km

Founded on 10 June AD 68, León has lived through two gilded ages — one as an outpost of the Roman Empire, the other as a medieval orb of Castilian glory. This handsome town reveals the occasional token of its antiquity: in the evening I pass a building that incorporates the surviving fragment of a Roman wall.

William Longsword, Duke of Normandy, and Harald the Severe of Norway would have been also-rans if there had been a European award for Funniest Regal Name of the Dark Ages. One of León’s proudest buildings, St Isidore’s Basilica, which I visit today, supplanted a humbler church founded on the site in AD 966 by order of — all hold your sides now — King Sancho the Fat.

The basilica was later rivalled by León’s cathedral, commenced in the reign of Ferdinand III. Wisely eschewing a nickname, Ferdinand was crowned King of Leon and Castile here in 1230. My visit lasts long enough to contain a highlight and a lowlight. Cocooned inside the chapel, I let my eyes wander to the mesmerising geometric ceiling and the altar shimmering in candlelight, as I feel the thrumming of some deep harmonic chord from a distant pipe organ.