Why has Basque culture remained so distinct?
Parts of Basque Country are very Spanish—San Sebastián, for example—but you get to a place like Ordizia, and the mountains give it a kind of isolation that the rest of Western Europe doesn’t have. San Sebastián is a very international city, with lots of tourists, fancy restaurants and lots of Spaniards coming on vacation. Ordizia is just a hundred percent Basque, rural, with fierce Basque identification, and it’s an ETA stronghold. To me that was one of the most interesting things about being there— it’s a very small area, but you go from one corner to another in half an hour and you’re in a different world. Franco died more than 30 years ago, and the Basques are no longer oppressed. Why is cultural and political independence still so important to them? Well, I was going to say that the pro-independence types tend to be in these remote communities—not that Ordezia is that remote, but the mentality is remote. But that’s not really true, because I did meet these very cultured, fluent Eng
