One of the challenges with studying and understanding the origins and evolution of the Basque language is simply that it is only until relatively recently that it has been written down. Thus, whenever a new fragment of Euskara is discovered, it is a big deal. While the oldest known phrases in Euskara data back to […]
Men and women who are exceptionally tall, who stand out in a crowd, who literally tower over the rest of us, certainly draw our attention. They fascinate us. Often, they become entertainers — André the Giant parlayed his size first in professional wrestling and then acting. Today, people of unusual height, particularly in basketball, use […]
I hate peppers. They smell nasty when they are cooking and they taste vile. My dad had literally hundreds of pepper plants in his garden. He would always give me a hard time when I ate his homemade chorizo, which I loved, saying how could I like those when they had peppers in them? When […]
Whenever I visit the Basque Country, my entire time ends up being centered around dinner tables abounding with food and drink. I swear I always find 10 pounds that I never manage to lose after each visit. Food and drink are such central parts of Basque life that it is hard to imagine a Basque […]
My dad’s favorite sport to watch was boxing. I never asked him why (so many questions were never asked…) but I always assumed that it was because, of the sports on our American TV, boxing was the most straightforward, something he didn’t have to grow up with to understand, unlike American football. However, I recently […]
This year is the 500th anniversary of Magellan’s expedition, which culminated in Juan Sebastián Elcano becoming the first person to intentionally circumnavigate the planet. Elcano hailed from the small Basque coastal town Getaria, Gipuzkoa, just twenty-five kilometers west of Donostia/San Sebastián. However, Elcano is not the only famous son of Getaria and, in fact, isn’t […]
We are all familiar with the Basques who, like my dad and his uncles before him, came to the United States on contracts to herd sheep. They all came looking for opportunity and for a better life than what they could make back in the “old country.” But, sheepherding wasn’t the only route to a […]
Found these at our local World Market. Elgorriaga, the first chocolate company in Spain, has been making chocolates since 1770. The company started in Irún, Gipuzkoa.
I’m a man of simple tastes, seemingly from a long line of Uberuagas with similar levels of refinement. My dad would rather make sure he get his dollar’s worth at an all-you-can-eat buffet. And when I took my aunts, who grew up in rural Bizkaia, to the Guggenheim in Bilbao, and I asked them what […]
In his blog, Ricardo Ibarra posted an infographic taken from El Correo that shows the breakdown of the last elections by region within the Basque Autonomous Community, an image shamelessly stolen from him and reposted here (click on the image for a bigger version). It is interesting to see how things break down. Gipuzkoa went […]
