the society
Sunset steals into the kitchen. Shards of pale light sneak between mustard curtains. It has been raining again. The horizon is smudged grey and orange as if someone has smeared a dirty thumb along where land ends and the sky should begin. Ramon weighs a bulb of garlic in one hand. He pushes away a half glass of alcoholic cider.
An old digital clock flashes neon red from across the room and tells him they’re late.
“They’re always late,” Ramon sighs.
We walk outside. A child runs across a large paved courtyard, clutching a rubber ball in his arms. The main-road steams as an overladen truck, pregnant with dairy for the market, passes at speed.
A sign above the bus stop indicates we are in Elgiobar, Basque Country, Northern Spain. The town pays homage to the functionality of concrete. Stark, drab, rectangular apartment blocks jut out of the ground. The shades of residential grey are punctuated however broken up by painted maps hanging across apartment balconies.
The maps are an outline of Basque Country, emblazoned with large distinct red arrows. I point out one of the maps and ask Ramon what it all means. His voice is deep. Its sounds like he has eaten gravel. He explains that when people are arrested for being members of Basque’s separatist group, ETA, or suspected of carrying out activities in its support, they are sent to jails in the Spanish colonies in Africa. The maps with the red arrows are pleading: Bring our sons, daughters, brothers and sisters home. Jail them, no doubt, if they are guilty, but let their families visit – don’t isolate them a world away.
It is said that the Basque language is the oldest in Western Europe, and their people are the oldest permanent residents of the grand continent. The pocket of Northern Spain and Southern France that they occupy is cruel in its beauty. It leaves you wondering how you got cheated out of such natural scenery when you were growing up. Basque Country’s thick green forests, untouched by water restrictions, soaring mountains and isolated farmhouses lampoon the sprawling suburbia and expanses of the brown, flat land of my youth on the peripheries of Melbourne.
Ramon is back in the kitchen with a knife in his hand. Flashes of silver dance across the blade under a naked light bulb. It cuts smoothly into the flesh of a tuna. Ramon says this dish is better prepared one day in advance. I ask if it is a traditional Spanish recipe.
Ramon puts the knife down. He tells me to be careful, “The Basques are proud. Don’t call their food Spanish.”
Ramon picks up a bruised tomato and squeezes until it explodes over a pot of half-cooked onions. He says that last century the Basques were brutally oppressed by the Spanish dictator General Franco. The Basque culture, their language and their way of life were to be stamped out. Ramon’s family only learnt Basque through being taught by older uncles and family friends in isolated farm houses. If they were caught, those passing on their native tongue would have had a four-walled cell to contemplate their passion for educating.
Thick chunks of tuna fall into a vast crimson sea of softened red peppers. Ramon takes care to wipe the bench clean of splash marks, like polishing a car for his daughter’s wedding. There is a mound of rough, earthy potatoes waiting to be guillotined on a wooden chopping board and it’s clear that there’s more work to be done.
Perhaps more than anywhere else in Europe, Basques are obsessed with food. Since the 1870’s Basque men have been secretly gathering in small member-based groups and cooking together in communal kitchens called txokos, or societies.
There’s a knock at the front door. The echo of bare knuckles against stained wood announces the arrival of Ramon’s family. He rests a worn wooden spoon on a pillow of soft boiled potatoes. Voices come running into the room followed by the people who spoke them. A tsunami of chatter, the six people fill a large room as if they were one hundred.
The kitchen is quickly occupied by shaved cured hams, a local hard cheese and juicy peaches. Ramon kisses everyone twice, then waves them away.
A growing mist engulfs the kitchen as a cooking pot comes to the boil. Ramon turns the heat down. He clears his throat and explains that during the Franco years, societies not only filled the stomachs of the Basque people but also became an unspoken venue of defiance. They were one of the few places where Basques could legally meet without state control. A place where they could speak Basque, sing Basque and be Basque.
Ramon’s wife is in the kitchen telling a story about a cousin who cannot find work. It seems to be a story told so many times in these parts. Over half of people under thirty-five are not in work. I ask Ramon what this is doing to the country. He doesn’t say a thing. He just points a twisted finger, scarred by the cuts and callouses of someone who relies on his hands for a living, to his temple and twists like he is opening a new bottle of wine.
The family binds around a thick wooden table. Bread is ripped from a long cob and placed by the side of shallow bowls. Ramon struggles under the weight of a giant pot full of mamitaco, a local dish. I tell Ramon that I haven’t seen a McDonalds since I came to Basque Country. He smiles, and deep lines carve into his cheeks. “It will never work. People here like to know who they are buying their food from, where it comes from,” he says.
Ramon arcs his neck back so that his eyes follow the cracks in the plaster roof. His wife wraps an arm around his waist. The table explodes in laughter as the grandmother’s glasses fog over from the steam of the freshly served meal.
