Bilbao, Basque Country and Spain
In Spain we have four different languages: Spanish, Catalan, Galician and
Basque. The first three are rooted in Latin; no one knows where Basque
comes from.
- Spanish
(get lessons HERE :-)
is spoken all over -with different accents- in the different
regions Spain is composed of.
- Catalan is spoken in the areas of Catalun~a, Valencia y Baleares (see
below on Autonomies). This three regions gather around 10 provinces on
Eastern Spain.
- Galician is spoken in Galicia which corresponds to 4 provinces on the
Northwest of Spain.
- Basque is spoken in the Basque Country.
If you go to any of these regions you will hear Spanish and/or
the native language depending on the city or town you are in;
but for sure you will be able to read all the public notices, road signs and
directions -towns names are different in both languages usually-, etc in both
languages, do not get confused.
Prices are in pesetas (pts), e.g., 10.000 is ten thousand pesetas (we use the
point instead of a comma to mark thousands, while we use a comma instead of
your decimal point). But we never use cents in prices.....
Notes are of 1.000, 2.000, 5.000 and 10.000 pts. Coins are of
1, 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 200 and 500 pts.
The US dollar price varies between 100 and 150 pts; therefore a quick
way to convert pesetas to US$ is: take out the last two digits and add to
the remaining figure an amount between 0 and half of it.... Example: 7.000
pts will be somewhere in between 70$ and 105$....
Spain is divided into 52 (?) Provinces. Each province has
a most important town that becomes the Capital of the Province. For
example, Cristina's province is Vizcaya and the capital is Bilbao where she
was born. Sometimes -most of the times- the province and the city capital
share the same name, for example: Barcelona province, Barcelona capital.
Now: the provinces in Spain are grouped into
Autonomies
which are, more or less, independent administrative entities, economically
speaking, from the central government. That is, Spain becomes like a
federation of autonomies with a central government located in Madrid, which
is not only capital of the province Madrid, but also the capital of Spain.
For example: Catalun~a is an autonomy, Galicia is an autonomy, Baleares is an
autonomy.
If you wonder if the Basque Country is an autonomy.... SEE BELOW
:-)
The History and the Language are basic features to understand a culture.
A distintive feature of the Basque Country is the fact of staying in
the same area since Prehistoric times. This area corresponds to the
West Pirenees, spreading to the Northeast in the France we know today and to
the Southwest in the Spain we know today.
Its strategic location in the Pirenees makes the Basque Country a crossing
land of uncountable cultures coming from the North and the South. These
qualities have conformed the character of the modern basque people: PROTECTOR
of their history and OPEN to new things.
The Basque Country stands in the North part of Spain. It occupies an area of
7261 square kilometres and with a population of 2159701 inhabitants. The map
only shows the 3 provinces in the Autonomy.
The geograghy of The Basque Country is a complexity of mountains and
valleys. The mountain ranges of Gorbea, Aitzgorri and Aralar -with
mountain tops of 1500 meters- separate the coast from the inland area.
- Many short rivers flow to the coast -Atlantic ocean (Cantabrico Sea)-
carrying much water (Nervión-Ibaizabal, Deva, Urumea, Bidasoa).
- On the Iberian side we can only mention the Zadorra-Urquiola river.
The flat inland area, called la Llanada de Vitoria, is separated from the
river Ebro by the mountains of Vitoria.
The basque coast is mostly a rocky coast, with 90% of it formed by
cliffs and the rest by beaches and sandy places. The continental platform
only goes into the ocean for a few miles before rushing down to almost 3.000
metres of depth. A peculiarity is water temperature: in winter it is
the average for its latitude, but in summer it reaches temperatures similar
to those of warmer seas. Because of this, the sea coast of The Basque Country
constitues a very important reserve for life. In this area you can find:
- Sardines, anchovys, macherels and "chicharros"
- Tuna and "cimarrón" migrate to these waters in August
- In the influence area of the tides or in more deep waters, lobsters,
barnacles, "centollos", mollusks like clams,"berberechos", razor clams, and
fish like "lubinas", red breams, "rapes" and "gallos" can be found.
In general the climate of the Basque Country is humid-warm, becoming
softer and more rainy on the atlantic coast, while inland presents bigger
temperature changes.
The Basque Country is historically composed by 7 Provinces, 3 in
France and 4 in Spain. The Spanish Provinces are: Navarra, Guipuzcoa, Alava
and Vizcaya. Vizcaya can be written Bizkaia if you use the Basque
language. Remember, if you come to the Basque Country all
the readings and announcements will be written in both languages: Basque and
Spanish, and very often names have COMPLETELY different spelling... so do
not get confused if you see sometimes Bilbao (Spanish) and others
Bilbo (Basque).
The names of the Capitals and Provinces in the Spanish Basque Country
in both languages are (Spanish -- Basque):
- Pamplona -- Irun~a is the Capital of Navarra,
- San Sebastian -- Donosti is the Capital of Guipuzcoa,
- Vitoria -- Gazteiz is the Capital of Alava,
- Bilbao -- Bilbo is the capital of Vizcaya -- Bizkaia.
(In these pages we are using mostly the Spanish names.)
I guess you would assume that there is a Spanish Autonomy
grouping the Provinces in the Basque Country, right? Well, no.
Autonomies started being defined once the democracy arrived in Spain
in 1978. What happened is that the Province of Navarra had kept during
Franco's Dictatorship different privileges (better!) than the other basque
Provinces. For that and for other political reasons Navarra ended up
creating its own autonomy, different from the so-called Basque Country
autonomy, which is composed by the other three provinces. Clear? For this
reason you can hear pretty frequently the argument: does Navarra belongs to
the Basque Country?
The Basque Country's ancient language, the Basque, presents
characteristics no comparable to any other language in the world.
In Basque, the Basque Country is called Euskadi or Euskalherria (herri ==
pueblo == people/village); the language is Euskera and the people, the
basques, are Euskaldunes.
As an example of how the Basque looks like, Cristina's last name
is in fact a basque word, or better, a set of basque words:
- etxe-a = the (a) house (etxe) .
- aurre-ko = in front (aurre) of (ko).
Aurrecoechea is the spelling in Spanish; the spelling in Basque would
be/is Aurrekoetxea; it sounds the same....
I always wondered if the basque
spelling would ease my "torture" when spelling my name to foreigners
... :-)
As you can tell from Cristina's last name, basque last names very
often tell about location, the location of the
family house. Aurrecoechea- tells
about a house that is located in the front, the first one. There are in fact
several houses -Caserios (typical basque house)- named after
Aurrecoechea in the Basque Country. Ask Cristina if you are curious to know
where -in which villages- these houses are.....
I (Cristina) didnt learn Basque in school because of the political situation
at the time. My uncle and godfather Anton gave me a small book to learn the
Basque in our region. What happens is that the Basque language changes
slightly from Province to Province; what I learned was the Basque in my
province Vizcaya. By the way: to overcome this problem of having different
dialects once we were an Autonomy, the Governement created an official Basque
language for the community: it is called Batua; unfortunately Batua
keeps much more from the Guipuzcoan than from the Vizcayan.... a pity.
A short Euskera lesson, from my small repertoir in BizkaiEuskera.
Pronunciation tips: z,x,s sound the same as in s; n~ is like in
Spanish, sounds like gn in French.
The list of words goes: Basque - American - Spanish
- Bai - Yes - Si
- Ez - No - No
- Kaixo - Hi/Hello - Hola
- Egunon - Good Day - Buenos Dias
- Eskarrikasko - Thank you very much - Muchas Gracias
- Mesedes - Please - Por Favor
- Zelan zagos? - How are you? - Como estas?
- Ondo! - Fine! - Bien!
- Poztuten naz - I am glad - Me alegro
- Euskera baki zu? - Do you speak Basque? - Hablas vasco?
- Ez dakitordin~a ba ikasten nabil - No I dont, but I am learning :-)
- No, pero lo estoy aprendiendo
By nature, Basques are expansive people, fond of entertainment, and the
numerous outstanding festivities held throughout the year give them ample
opportunity to enjoy themselves. We come closer to the world of these
celebrations with music and dancing, two indispensable features of almost
all of the festive proceedings.
In the Basque Country the winter goes by quickly between the fiestas
of Olentzero, the serenading groups of Santa Agueda, the
"Tamborradas" -drumming processions- and the carnivals.
After Easter week with its
strange rituals of burnning male and female Judases, the true festive season
is upon us, the summer, packed with celebrations which are noticiable centred
round nature. The cults of water, fire and nature kingdom, open the doors
wide to various different celebrations known as Saint's Day fiestas. These
always include the ancient custom of the bertsolaris' musical
commentary - in rhyming songs composed on the spot- on the exploits of the
participants of the country
games and sports.
All of this makes up the cultural tradition of a people whose fiestas
and celebrations are an expression of its state of mind, its deep-rooted
character and strong personality.
Many people in The Basque Country state, without modesty, that the basque
cooking is the best in the world.
That may be a chauvinism.
However, that is not so far from reality if we assure that in little places
of the world there are so many possibilities of exercising the so called
"good eating" like in Euskadi.
Basque people have made from taste-exercising one of the defining
characteristic of their culture.
In this land, the cult of good cooking is extended to all levels , included
the most popular one.
Thus, it's not strange that in traditional recipes from housewifes of rural
farmhouses (caserios) and small fishing ports, or the talent of male groups
in gastronomical societies, where the most famous basque cooks are inspired
for preparing their most exquisitive dishes.
We invite you to know some of our most
typical dishes. Although, undoubtly, the best you can do is to taste
them.
We call El Gran Bilbao (Big or Great Bilbao) to the area that includes
Bilbao city plus the almost 30 towns around in a 10 Km circled area
approximately at both banks of the river (La Ria), El Nervion.
It can be considered one of the most relevant industrial,
commercial and financial centres in Spain, (third place in population after
Madrid and Barcelona).
![Map of Great Bilbao]()
(Ignore the message "we are here" written on the map in LEIOA,
where the University is located...
-yes, we took the map from their
page :-)
Due to its strategical situation, in a natural comunication way of
the Ebro valley and the plateau of Castilla with the Cantabrico sea, it
developed during the Medium Age an important commercial activity as well as
its busy docks. Also the early development of the siderurgical industry was
eased by plenty iron deposits found in the surroundings of Bilbao.
Bilbao's port, where the traditional iron exporting and coal
importing stood out until recently, spreads along the Nervion estuary.
It held in the past the biggest traffic of the Cantabrico sea.
The siderurgical and metallurgical activities have decreased in the last
years with the end of one of the main industries byu the river: Altos Hornos.
Still the main economical activities in the great Bilbao are mechanical,
chemical, food, wood, building and graphic arts industries, electronics
and software in the last years.
Bilbao is the capital of Bizkaia, it is situated in the valley of Nervion
river, 20 Km away from the Cantabrico sea. The metropolitan entity of Great
Bilbao is one of the most relevant industrial, commercial and financial centre of Spain.
![Map of Bilbao City]()
CURRENT DATA:
Total surface area: 41,25 Km cuadrados
Population: 372.786 inhab.
Pop. Density: 9.325 inhab. per Km
Elevation: 19 metres above sea-level
Climate: oceanic, with mild winters and summers.
