I’m sitting in the square in the shade of the Santiago Cathedral in Bilbao. Gord should be along any minute, but this is a lovely place to wait.
As the signs have told us since we started the Camino del Norte, we are not in Spain, we are in Basque County. Yesterday we passed through the town of Munitibar, the self-proclaimed heart of Basque Country. The graffiti suggests this is a place where Basque independence is an important goal. There were also a few demanding the release of the Basque ETA political prisoners.
We spent last night in Guernica, the town that Picasso immortalized in his painting of the same name. In April 1937, Franco forces, with the help of the German Nazis and Italian Fascists, bombed the town during a crowded market day. The town was levelled with great loss of life. Picasso’s painting is in Madrid, but there is a replica printed on tile in the center of town. There is another copy that hangs in the United Nations building in New York City.
Tonight we are staying in a lovely room a couple of blocks away from the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao. We met up with Charlie, a British pilgrim and very neat person, for a walk around the Museum and a cool drink. We all took advantage of the kids water park to get cool. We are having a series of sunny days with highs around 30 degrees.
Stunning. You made a good choice on the next leg of your journey. I used to show Gehry’s very cool Bilbao museum to my students and Guernica of course. Apparently when fascists accused Picasso of doing that horrible painting he said “no, you did this”. Perhaps we have talked about that story. The spider even looks familiar. Happy trails. Snow and a gale expected in B C tomorrow.
Really want to see Bilbao and hopefully we’ll get that chance soon. What fun splashing about in the water park…hard to imagine here in cold, rainy Victoria! Continue to soak up the sun!
Thanks for the memories. I was with my daughter Noëlle, on my 2007 Camino and we stayed two nights in Bilbao and then she had to return to London to work and I walked on by myself. Only alone for about an hour though. Met two lovely Belgians. Great memories.