Basque History of the World (6 page)

The manuscript was written at the time of the First Crusade, when anti-Islamic bigotry had been elevated to the status of a religious belief and was being feverishly embraced. The poem has made the battle of Roncesvalles more famous than that of Poitiers. Even before the poem was rediscovered, the legend of Roland had the same stature in France as El Cid in Spain, an icon of national identity. In the sixteenth-century classic
Don Quixote
, Cervantes wrote of Roland and “that traitor, Ganelon.”

But the truth is very different. The real battle had taken place three centuries earlier, in 778. From the opening lines—”King Charles, the Great, our Emperor, has stayed in Spain for seven years”—the poem is historically wrong.

Charlemagne had only spent a few months in Spain, and the ones betrayed were not the French but the Muslims. There was no Ganelon, but there was a Suleiman, a Muslim who was feuding with the emir in Cordoba over control of the Ebro Valley. In 777, Suleiman, wishing to take the Ebro away from the emir’s control, had crossed the Pyrenees to offer Charlemagne a list of cities above the great river that he had arranged to have fall to the Franks without a fight. Seeing an opportunity, Charlemagne crossed into Spain in spring 778 from the Mediterranean side, the old Visigoth path of conquest. He was able to take Girona, Barcelona, and Huesca with almost no resistance. But in Zaragoza on the Ebro, the Muslim commander did not follow the plan, instead defending the city. Faced with a real fight for the first time in this expedition, Charlemagne decided to forgo Zaragoza and return to France. It was now August, and he had been in Spain only about four months. On his way back he chose to attack Pamplona, destroy its walls, and loot the town. In so doing he enraged not the Muslims but the Basques.

To return to France, Charlemagne chose the same pass as had Abd-al-Rahman in his ill-fated 732 conquest of Europe. Throughout history this was the pass chosen for conquest. Though narrow and rugged, it is wide enough for an army. It is easier to cross than the neighboring Ispegui pass, which leads up to sheer gray rock and narrow waterfalls, by means of a narrow ledge of a road along the mountainside. Smugglers used the cloud-covered crests of the Ispegui pass, preferring its inaccessibility. But armies always chose Roncesvalles.

Early twentieth-century smuggler apprehended by the Spanish at the Ispegui Pass.

The Basques, being greatly outnumbered, waited in the pine woods in a place known in Basque as Orreaga, literally, the place where the pine trees grow, which has been translated into Spanish as Roncesvalles, valley of the pines, and into French as Roncevaux. The Basques allowed the huge Frankish army to pass, climbing up to the windswept heights today known as Ibañeta. From there, the Pyrenees can be seen all the way across to the rugged mountains of Basse Navarre. But after Ibañeta the army had to thin out to single file to drop down along a mountain trail to the rocky valley of waterfalls that parts the Pyrenees. Charlemagne made it through and up to the steep mountainside village of Valcarlos, where wild apples still grow in the steep woods. While waiting in Valcarlos, the rear guard, commanded by his nephew Roland according to the poem (though some records write of an official named Hruodlandus), was attacked.

The Basques ran out of the forest with rocks and spears, attacking the Franks, who were sluggish with their heavy arms. There, on the bald heights of Ibañeta where wild purple crocus push through the grass, according to one account written only about fifty years later, the Basques killed every trapped Frank. Possibly some escaped, but it is certain that they killed Roland or Hruodlandus, two others close to Charlemagne, and a significant part of the force. Then the Basque forces simply dispersed, going home to their mountain villages, so that there was no Basque army for Charlemagne to pursue in vengeance. Pamplona was left to revert to Muslim rule.

At the end of the poem, tears are rolling over the white beard of Charlemagne as he says, “Oh God, how hard my life is.” But, in fact, Charlemagne never recorded the encounter. The Basque attack of August 15, 778, was to be the only defeat Charlemagne’s army ever suffered in his long military career.

The first record of the battle was written in 829, after the death of Charlemagne, and states that the French army, although far larger, was defeated by Basques. The Basques built few monuments to their victories. In Pasajes San Juan, the great Guipúzcoan port, along the little street that follows the deep water harbor cutting into the mountains, stands a nearly forgotten stone shrine, built in 1580, that commemorates the Basque victory over Charlemagne.

The lesson of the battle of Roncesvalles should have been: Do not to alienate the Basques. Yet somehow, in the ensuing centuries, Roland became the battle’s hero—in time, even to the Basques. The Basques went on to other battles against Franks and both with and against Muslims, against the Vikings and even the Normans. With their small population, ambush remained a favorite technique. But throughout northern Navarra, folk legends developed that are still heard today of a local character, a giant of Herculean strength named Errolan—Roland. Basque myth had become Christianized.

Constant warfare was changing Basque society. The people moved into fortified towns. A military chain of command gradually evolved in which once separate tribal chieftains became generals, the generals became a ruling class, and, in 818, Iñigo Iñiguez became king and ruled for thirty-three years. The Kingdom of Navarra, the only kingdom in all of Basque history, had begun. It would last until 1512, its dynasties becoming defenders of Christianity, a great regional power of the Middle Ages, and a critical force in the Reconquista. These Basques of Navarra helped create the country that Basques would one day see as their greatest problem—Spain.

3: The Basque Whale

Many say that the first to take on this harrowing adventure must have been fanatic—eccentrics and dare-devils. It would not have begun, they say, with reasonable Nordics, but only with the Basques, those giddy adventurers.

—
Jules Michelet, on whaling
, L
A
M
ER
,
1856

I
N
1969 a cave with drawings of fish dating back to the Paleolithic Age was discovered in Vizcaya. The fish appear to be sea bream. A sea bream drawing was also found in a cave in Guipúzcoa, and drawings of a number of other fish species have been discovered as well. These drawings are remarkable because Paleolithic man, living in natural caves 12,000 years ago, usually chose to depict mammals, such as deer and horses, and not fish. He had not yet gone to sea. But these same caves are also significant because the remains of fish bones and shells reveal an unusual prehistoric diet.

A reverence for sea bream,
bixigu
, has been conserved through millennia on the coast of Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa. It is a traditional Christmas dish, and in Guipúzcoa, a pastry shaped in the form of a sea bream is served on Christmas Eve. On that night, the people of San Sebastián gather by their perfectly curved, elegantly lamp-lit bay, and climb Mount Igueldo, the steep little mountain at the harbor entrance, carrying a large effigy of a sea bream. This is because the fish is associated with Olentzaro, a pre-Christian evil sort of Santa Claus who slides down chimneys on Christmas Eve to harm people in their sleep. Fireplaces are lit for the holiday to keep him away.

In the early twentieth century, when Basques who had migrated to Madrid formed a gastronomic society, they named it
Besuguin-a Lagunak
, Friends of the Sea Bream. In San Sebastián such gastronomic societies make a near ritual of fishing sea bream on Saturday nights in January.

The following recipe from the gastronomic society Donosti Gain, which means “in San Sebastián,” was collected by the well-known Guipúzcoan chef José Castillo.

SEA BREAM
(for two)

1 beautiful sea bream

6 tablespoons olive oil

4 tablespoons vinegar

      
2 slices guindilla pepper (a dried red, slightly hot, local pepper)

4 cloves garlic

Put the sea bream in a casserole.

Roast it well in an oven.

Put the vinegar in a skillet and turn up the heat. When the vinegar is reduced to half, add the juice from the fish that is left in the casserole and let it simmer a little.

In another skillet put the olive oil and the garlic cloves cut in slices. Heat the skillet with the oil and garlic. When the garlic begins to turn golden, add the guindilla and turn off the heat. Add the reduction of vinegar and fish juice.

Bring to a boil for 1 minute.

Uncover the sea bream and add the liquid.

This leaves the question: What is meant by a “beautiful sea bream”? The answer was suggested in a 1933 book about fish written by the pseudonymous Ymanol Beleak, a native of Bilbao who lived many years in San Sebastián and whose real name was Manuel Carves-Mons. Beleak, an entrepreneur who, among other projects, manufactured chocolate boxes and created his own label of sparkling wine, wrote, “A sea bream of quality has a small head and thick back. It does not need to be large to be good.”

O
RIGINALLY,THE
B
ASQUE
idea of the sea,
itsaso
, was the Bay of Biscay, that part of the Atlantic between France and Spain that on some medieval maps is marked
El Mar de los Vascos
, the Basque Sea. This, by Atlantic standards, is a relatively unfertile corner of the ocean, because while fish tend to cluster in the relatively shallow water over continental shelves, the Iberian shelf is short, dropping off steeply close to shore.

Detail of a map by Giacomo Cantelli entitled “Vizcaya is divided into four major parts,” from
Mercurio Geográfico
, Rome, 1696. Note that the gulf is labeled
Mare di Basque
, the Basque Sea. (Photography archive of the Untzi Museoa-Maritime Museum, San Sebastián)

With flair and imagination, the Basques have created great dishes out of even the least fleshy little creatures of their unfruitful Basque Sea:
txangurro
, the scrawny spider crab of winter;
txitxardin
, tiny baby Atlantic eel caught in the rivers, also in winter;
antxoa
, the spring anchovies;
txipiron
, small squid caught off the coast in the summer; and
sardina
, the fat summer sardines that were a specialty of the Bilbao area before the pollution that came with the industrial revolution.