![\"\"](\"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Segundo-Lopez.jpg\")
<\/a>- \n
- After the Spanish Civil War, times were tough for people. There were severe food shortages and food and other supplies were rationed. However, as in all times, hard times create opportunities for some, and the food shortages led to wandering pasta makers, who were quite prolific until the 1950s when things started to improve in Spain.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Many pasta makers – fideogile<\/em> in Basque – worked out of their own home so didn’t wander. But there were others that moved from town to town – fideogile ibiltariak<\/em> – working in the kitchens of baserriak and houses of their customers. Usually, pasta making was a secondary job for these people, supplementing the income they made from their main job.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- The first itinerant pasta makers in the Basque Country were from Asturias<\/a> and Valencia<\/a>. Making their way first to Araba, they would go door to door and sell their services. They brought with them machines to make pasta and enterprising young Basques learned to copy these machines and make their own. It was a hard job making these machines as they didn’t have good supplies for parts. They had to salvage materials from scrap.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Not only was making the machines hard, but so was making the noodles themselves. Flour was in short supply and often had to be smuggled. The customer was responsible for getting the flour. Making the dough was the hardest part, “because it had to be thick. If it came out thin, the work could go to hell.”<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- When people from a certain village wanted to hire the services of the traveling pasta makers, or the fideoen gizona<\/em> – the noodle man – they might put an ad in a newspaper. When the noodle man came to town, his arrival was announced by the pealing of the bells. A typical order was for 2-20 kilograms, or 4-40 pounds. However, some people acted as resellers, ordering more than 200 pounds of noodles to sell in Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
A full list of all of Buber’s Basque Facts of the Week can be found in the Archive<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- The first itinerant pasta makers in the Basque Country were from Asturias<\/a> and Valencia<\/a>. Making their way first to Araba, they would go door to door and sell their services. They brought with them machines to make pasta and enterprising young Basques learned to copy these machines and make their own. It was a hard job making these machines as they didn’t have good supplies for parts. They had to salvage materials from scrap.<\/li>\n\n\n\n