Digital ghost-writer and the subterranean traveller, on their way to Bilbao, chose to make a stopover in Vitoria, a small, beautiful town around a fortressed hill. With its wide streets and whitewashed houses, the soft murmur of its pedestrian zones and its overall neatness, the town had a distinctly un-Spanish look and feel.
“Where are we,” the subterranean traveller asked, “it seems like Southern England or perhaps the French Atlantic coast.”
“This is Euskadi,” digital explained, “things are different here.”
“I’d like things to be different where we live,” the subterranean said.
They walked round the old centre, had a cup of coffee and a piss, did not buy anything, and continued their journey. On leaving town, after a handful of sharp and mostly forbidden u-turns, ghost-writer screaming and the traveller scolding, they managed not to get on the highway and instead took the old road north, sweet and pretty and free of charge.
Following the gorge that takes the river towards Bilbao, the entrance to Euskadi’s industrial heartland reminded the subterranean traveller much of Liège, in the foothills of the Belgian Ardennes and cut in two by the river Meuse. Liège’s most famous son was George Simenon, creator of the grumpy Parisian police inspector Maigret. Simenon famously wrote a Maigret novel in a week of continuous labour, smoking and typing away, while on his contemplative days he had sex with at least three different women. The painter and sculptor Corneille, founding member of the CoBrA movement, also was born here. Of course, the city’s heydays of carbon and steel have long gone and ever since various local and national governments found difficulty stopping its decay.
Bilbao has survived remarkably better. The subterranean traveller did not recognise much from a visit back in 1989. In between lush green slopes beautiful streets were lined up in a square grid. A surprisingly large portion of the city’s buildings were based upon nineteen thirties’ modernist principals, mainly constructivism and Bauhaus. In digital and the traveller’s hometown of Barcelona such symbols of logical taste are all but absent. Ghost-writer and the subterranean visited many shops those two days, cruising the miniature city’s avenues up and down numerous times.
“I could live here,” digital remarked, and the traveller understood this as a desire to leave behind Catalunya, more than anything else.
Food and wine were excellent indeed and the women, thought the traveller, looking especially healthy. With their strong faces and unruly black hair he didn't find them as beautiful as their Spanish counterparts, but their shining skins emanated desire and prowess.
“I could as well,” the subterranean answered romantically, though a sting of wisdom warned that anything under a million people had become uninhabitable to him.
On what isn’t much more than a square kilometre, museums, galleries and monuments abound. They accidentally visited La Alhóndiga, a giant indoor square with low ceiling inevitably evoking memories of Cordaba’s Mesquita, and they deliberately went to El Guggen, a freakish construction on the outside (as if a huge tidal wave had washed ashore a deep sea crab fish) containing a pleasant but not too exceptional exhibition centre, offering three one-man-shows. There were the time bending steel walls you could walk along by Richard Serra and a rather ridiculous collection of interchangeable upside down paintings with long, meaningful titles by Georg Baselitz. The subterranean remembered having to laugh when he saw his first Baselitz long ago in the Amsterdam Stedelijk, but it was a memory without much detail.
Then there was David Hockney. The old poof had gone back to mummy’s, in need of his help, and being there had taken up painting his youth’ surroundings, the Yorkshire farmlands. El Guggen showed a beautiful collection of country roads, woods, meadows and felled wood, taken through the seasons as they came that year, painted with great precision on an i-pad: A bigger picture
“Why did they get El Guggen,” digital ghost-writer wondered.
The subterranean answered, “Madrid already has La Reina Sofia and Thyssen and El Prado and all visiting international exhibitions.”
“I am aware of that,” said digital, “I’m just coming to realise all we have in Barcelona is local stuff.”
“Heavy stuff in its days, but slowly getting outdated indeed,” the traveller admitted.
“We’re doing poorly in many ways,” ghost-writer observed. “Where have we gone wrong, you wonder. Why are we left behind.”
Later that evening, over drinks and pintxos, she would raise the subject again.
“How come the difference is so big? I don’t see desperately poor people here. The police don’t show that contemptuous smirk too many mossos sport these days. Everything is clean and all seems to work.”
“We haven’t seen the outskirts yet,” the subterranean traveller warned, but he shared digital’s hunch it wouldn’t be complete devastation over there.
“We’ll get over it some day,” he added, sounding utterly unconvincing.
Next stop on their trip was the seaside resort of Donosti, or Donostia, the traveller never came to grasp the difference. La concha de mi madre was bathing in a surprisingly hot September sun and an incestuous swim the unsurpassable thing to do. Then there was Chillida’s peine del viento, withstanding the ocean. They like their art a little rusty here.
Visiting the Balenciaga museum in Getaria was included in the experience. A spacious mausoleum contained a modest number of exquisitely made dresses. Balenciaga already had twenty years of crafting Donostia’s upper class ladies’ wear behind him when he moved to Paris to become on of the leading designers of the French capital’s post-war era. When Balenciaga retired at the age of 73, he simply closed shop, leaving as his inheritance the strong imprint six decades of dedicated hard work had made on fashion.
Lunch that day was in Zarautz, where banners and placates reminded the visitor of the Basque people’s true alliance.
“What is it with this country that its peoples so desperately wish to disconnect,” the subterranean wondered.
“It’s the only way to escape the centripetal force of La Meseta,” digital ghost-writer answered. “You should have been aware of that by now,” she added, mildly rebuking him.
Back in Donosti there was a music festiv
“You’re one bunch of lucky bastards living in a place like this, and you ought to know that, cabrones,” singer Santi Balmes remarked to the cheers of a good hand of Catalans dispersed in the crowd.
Heading home, they crossed the empty lands of northern Aragón, rather beautiful. Closing in on Catalunya, the car’s radio started emitting reports on preparations being made for the upcoming Diada, to be celebrated with a massive demonstration for independence.
“Such is the state we're in,” said digital ghost-writer. “Now they want their freedom. But Europe will not allow them since they have nothing to offer.”
“It might work nevertheless,” the traveller argued. “When it all falls apart we might just be the right size to keep some level of order going.”
He pulled up for the car's last shot of gasoline.
“You gotta lokalise it, babe.”
“It's not workable, dear.”
They didn't know what to say next. He didn't want to hurt her feelings and she didn't want to see him hurt.
Back on the road the travel mode resisted being put aside. The subterranean gave it a good some kilometres before he said,
“Things would be easier in Euskadi.”
“They sure would,” his companion acknowledged.
