Travel:Karlos Arguiñano's wit and humour has turned him into the most famous chef on Spanish TV, admired by Spaniards and Basques alike. It seems unthinkable that this sympathetic Basque cook could drop a bombshell on prime-time national TV. "What is the longest river in Spain?" he asked his audience.
After a polite second the answer came: "It's the Guardia Civil, it originates in Seville . . . and dies in the Basque Country."
The joke, once told in public, took on a momentum of its own. While obviously playing around with mumbled pronunciation of the river Guadalquivir, it also made fun of the very Spanish-Navarrese origins of this semi-military police force. Arguiñano's joke was also a reminder that for most Basques the Guardia Civil was and still is an unwelcome and occupying force in their homeland. The joke could have been easily told in any of the numerous bars and gastronomic societies in the Basque Country. However, the Spanish audience saw no fun in it. For them, Arguiñano had added insult to injury by sneering at the victims and survivors of Eta's main enemy. (The TV chef apologised a day later but added with a grin that "the viewers have to admit, though, that it's still a good joke". In an apparently unrelated move he left TVE a month later and accepted an offer from Tele 5, the biggest private TV channel in Spain.)
What exactly is it about the Basque Country that evokes such passion? There are indeed some exceptional social and political features of Euskal Herria. Not only is there San Sebastian, the city with the highest per-square-mile distribution of Michelin stars in the western hemisphere. There is also popular cooking and eating; 1,300 gastronomic societies with some 80,000 members (and many more visitors and guests) are clearly proof that socialising over good food is a daily practised Weltanschauung.
However, not all is amicable. Eta is the only terrorist group in Europe that hasn't laid down its arms. Organised political violence has resulted in some 1,000 killings since 1969. More recently, campaigns to "extend the suffering" led to terrorist threats not only against conservative political councillors but against nationalist politicians who favour independence. It is complex constellations such as these that Paddy Woodworth, who has covered Spanish affairs for The Irish Times since 1979, and whose book Dirty War, Clean Hands: ETA, the GAL and Spanish Democracy came out in 2001, attempts to unravel.
It would be too much to expect from one writer a definite answer to the difficult question of how and why uncivil and civil elements co-exist. After all, the Basque Country is not the only society in which both features figure; Northern Ireland is another example that comes immediately to mind. Usually, such problems are the long-term results of not having had a lucky start. As Woodworth shows, that also applies to Basque society and politics. The 19th century was marked by the two long Carlist wars, after which the Basques lost their traditional rights. Rapid industrialisation added another dimension to the unresolved conflicts. In the 20th century, the Franco dictatorship, a problematic transitional period and the late arrival of democracy did not provide comprehensive solutions either.
IT WOULD BE wrong, though, argues Woodworth, always to blame Madrid and attribute all problems to the Spanish government. In almost all conflicts, Basques fought against Basques. Be they rural Carlists versus urban liberal reformers in the 19th century, pro-Franco supporters from Navarre and Álava fighting their more nationalist-oriented neighbours of Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia during the Spanish Civil War, or modern "Spanish" defenders of constitutional democracy disagreeing with violent or non-violent nationalists today - Woodworth succeeds in showing us the complexity of the Basque struggle for identity. For him, the Basque Country is a microcosm. "If it exists in the Basque Country, it exists anywhere," he notes.
However, the same microcosm can sometimes turn out to be a parallel universe where everything is done somewhat differently, ranging from speaking the oldest living language in Europe to some rituals and fiestas that border on the strange and bizarre, such as tearing off goose necks at fiestas, eating hake gums and baby eels, playing pelota, the Basque ball game, until the skin comes off one's hands, competing in complex a cappella cross-rhyme singing competitions, to Atlantic rowing regattas that make the annual Oxford-Cambridge rowing competition look like a bathtub race.
Woodworth's book is a terrific modern introduction to the Basque Country with plenty of hints for those who want to dig deeper. There are fascinating chapters not only on the Guggenheim museum and Bilbao's urban renewal but also on Basque literature, on Basque cuisine and its relation to politics (Arguiñano is not the only famous Basque chef), and, of course, on pelota. There are a few omissions. Sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll have also had their Basque dimension as any listener of such bands as Itoiz, Hertzainak or the rapper Fermin Muguruza can tell. These omissions are maybe down to musical taste. However, by following in Woodworth's footsteps one is likely to encounter these groups or to be introduced to them anyway. This book reminds us of Wilhelm von Humboldt's fascinating account of his sojourn in the Basque Country 200 years ago, in which he concluded how important it was to acknowledge that it is only by looking at cultural differences and studying peculiar traits that we begin to understand and learn more about the human condition.
Andreas Hess lectures in the School of Sociology, University College Dublin. He is currently working on his forthcoming book, Reluctant Modernisation: Plebeian Culture and Moral Economy in the Basque Country
The Basque Country: A Cultural History By Paddy Woodworth Signal Books, 290pp. £12