A Sunny Sunday With The Basques

It was one of those rare warm sunny Sundays in Paris, that brings the throngs out to celebrate the sun that has been playing hide and seek for the whole month.  I decided to go to a Fête des Basques taking place on a Pelota court, near the banks of the Seine.  For those of you not very familiar with the Basques, they are a cultural and ethnic group concentrated in the southwestern part of France and bordering Spain.

The Basque area is the western part of the Pyrenées, starting on the Atlantic coast around Bayonne , and winding down to very chic Biarritz and quaint Saint Jean de Luz, then crossing over the border of  Spain to San Sebastian and beyond.   For many years there have been separatist upheavals among the Basques, erupting into occasional violence, though this occurs more on the Spanish side.

The Basque language called Euskara, is amazingly still well understood, spoken and propagated in the whole area, even amongst the youth.  It is completely different from French, Spanish and  all other languages of the world, as it does not have an Indo-European origin.

School classes are taught both in Basque and French in an effort to keep up their bilingual culture. Their mysterious origin is often debated as the geographical area is sandwiched between two very well developed and distinct cultures.

Genetic studies do demonstrate that they have unique genetic patterns that set them apart from the surrounding non Basque population.  Strangely, they have the highest global concentration of RH negative blood types.

They seemingly arrived long before there was any agricultural activity on the Iberian peninsula.  Now they are well entrenched in raising sheep, a special breed of pigs, wine making, and growing their famous red peppers, called piments d’espelette.

This has given rise to a formidable production of cheeses made from lambs milk, which is aged in the cool mountains of the Pyrenées.  My favorite is Ossara Iraty, which is firm cheese that has a wonderful nutty flavor with a pleasant slightly acidic aftertaste.

The Basque pig is pretty with the pink and black markings around the bottom.  They are raised mostly in liberty grazing on chestnuts and mountain herbs.  Bayonne hams and a panoply of  sausages are therefore famous and sought after.

These long red peppers, have earned a AOC protection and are not hot, but have a lovely mild smokey flavor.  In late summer and fall, the Basque houses are often draped with long red strands of this famous pepper that is used liberally in seasoning most Basque dishes.

The most famous pasty is called a Gâteau Basque, which is a very buttery confection filled with primarily vanilla cream or black cherry preserves.  I have found them fairly easy to make and original in that the structure is a cross between a cake and a tart dough.

They are so identified with the Basque culture, that there is even a Musée du Gâteau Basque near Saint Jean de Luz  The region also prides itself on their chocolates, some incorporating the renown espelette peppers.

I love the region’s most acclaimed red wine, Irouleguy, which is as fun to pronounced as to taste.   It is a very full bodied and robust wine made from the Tannat, Cabernet franc and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes.  It can be rather tannique, so it is better to aged for a few years to soften the tannins.

Their national sport is Pelota or Pelote, consisting of two teams scoring points by batting a rubber or leather ball off a large wall called a fronton.  The court is much longer than a tennis court, and the action seems more targeted and intense.

I had never seen a Pelote game became, so it was for me, confusing to know how  and why a point could be scored, other than hitting the huge wall.  The whacking sounds were thundering to my ears, magnified by using solid wooden rackets.

The folk dancing was wonderful to watch; the women in gaily colored skirts and men in white pants sporting red bindings, red scarfs and red berets.  Red is certainly the predominant color, even in the decorative trim of their houses in the Basque country.

The Basque Association is quite active here in Paris and besides promoting tourism and staging cultural events like this, offers courses in Basque dance, choral music and language.   Waves of Basques have emigrated in the past to other countries, most predominately to America, Canada, Chile and Argentina.

Bakersfield, California and parts of Nevada and Idaho have a large population of Basque descendants.  I was surprised to meet an American one here in Paris at a gastronomic salon, where she was passing out samples at her husband’s cheese stand.

Having grown up in the states, she came to the Basque region in France to reconnect with her cultural heritage.  She fell in love with a Basque  farmer, married and now helps in the production and marketing of their cheeses.

Though she heard Basque occasionally being spoken by her grandparents, she wasn’t completely fluent in the language.   Now the mother of two children, she stated that Basque was their household language, and her children and their friends prefer to speak in Basque rather than French.

By the end of the festival, I found myself wishing I could sport a red scarf around my neck.  Who knows?   In my Irish family tree, there was a mysterious adopted one, supposedly found shipwrecked off the coast of Ireland and said to possibly have come from that area. After all, I am RH negative, love red peppers and red is one of my very favorite colors to wear!