Pilgrimage Towns

Along the many 'ways' to Santiago de Compostella in Spanish Galicia,  small village,  towns, and even a few cities that are expressions of their own histories. Here are some 'portraits' of those towns, including Belorado and Bermeo.​

​Tribute to Bermeo

-Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.     Gore Vidal.

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Bermeo, Bermeo: passion and sorrow beneath your forest blanket.

On steep and wooded coast, arena to the Bay of Biscay, Bermeo; home and hearth clustering around a small inlet, tall apartments hugging the slopes like eager spectators, salty air on your cheeks, residents drinking morning coffees from balconies, your children playing, overlooking harbour and mighty sea walls, watching the comings and goings of sea craft docking their catch, bobbing on reverberating waters, bouncing off disappointments, pointing to persistent centuries of struggle against the rambunctious sea, eyes drawn to the horizon where dwells the souls of fisher folk.

The early train steals into your heart, burrowing into its final station. People walk through turnstiles, passing cast-iron barriers and dark gates, white signs in your fond language, loud air, closed faces on the street, a morning pedestrian, sun in her eyes, whispering to the day,
‘Something may come of it.’

Our iron horse pulls away on its arcing return journey along rugged coast and tranquil bay for famous Guernika; old Basque capital, title of Picasso’s most celebrated painting, hated by Franco- onward, to industrial, anarchic Bilboa, iron reminder of prosperous and tragic industrial years when once stiff promise gave brief hope to republican Bermeo, end of the line Bermeo, back-to-the-wall Bermeo, all time demanding that you make a stand.

Residents in the old town’s apartments, hostels, bars, workshops and stores, lo0k from their windows and balconies, above narrow streets, seeing neighbours hanging their washing, searching for brothers, sisters and bread, men and women making love on large beds in small rooms, watching television, cream on their lips, recalling desperate times when bucking fish was a wife’s only meal, a manly touch, and her whispering,
‘Something came of that.’

You remember don’t you? When sister Guernica was pummelled and plundered by Hitler’s warplanes, the Basque nation trembling on stillborn independence, Bermeo fought the Battle of Machichaco, against the odds, four small trawlers protecting Republican people, guns and coinage against the rebel cruiser Canarias, toothpicks against cannon. Thirty-six dead stand high on the hill above town, a nickel sculpture commemorating their loss, our loss, remembering tidal noon, when all that was broken and sunken, has been floated again.  Battle of Machichaco; your trawlers destroyed or damaged, Nature’s salute is the crags offshore, built of shipwrecks.

Tranquil in the park; bandstand, footpaths, patterned garden, lush lawn and cast-iron seating, older men and women lunch, chat, play cards and watch the world go by. Cafes and eateries line two sides, outdoor meetings, business and pleasure, basic menus, coloured banners, scurrying waiters, the ONCE booth where townspeople buy their lottery tickets, drawing on luck in hope of the big win. Children ride their small bicycles or scooters, mothers earnestly watch, perhaps raising eyebrows to new arrivals. Check tickets again. No big win today.

Around the corner barnacle harbour shops, storehouses and flats cling to rocky shoreline, stone, brick and ironwork, café tables, seaside crags, stairs to somewhere, people washed over by the sea, all earnest, free and grim, soaking up afternoon warmth, tortilla under fork, worry and promise in their eyes. For good luck you dip your hands in the fountain, showing them to the sun.

Staunch Bermeo.  How many fires burnt into your wooden foundations over successive centuries before being rebuilt and rebuilt again until today’s stone and brick cling to your rocky shores like limpets, mussels and periwinkles? The tide washes in and out, crabs move sideways. Sensing a tsunami, your patrons climb the stairs, coffee cups steady in their hands.
Behind the station, your locked cathedral and ancient abbey, weeds at their feet, eighteen thousand resilient people walking indifferent past the fourteenth century to apartments overlooking piety lost forever to twentieth century guns and bombs of catholic Franco and fascist Hitler.
You know who you are Bermeo. Your fit young men in white trousers and shirts promenade with their brothers, sisters and mothers, a white bandage of honour wrapped around their wrist for all to see. Like a detective or spy, the tourist follows lengthening shadows, see them enter a large hall, no telling signs for stranger’s minds, just iron, brick and darkened windows to Basque interior, because everyone knows what this is. How could you not know?
Basque Pelote. A Pelota arena. Not tennis- hitting the ball over a net with an elegant racket. Pelote. Flinging ball against walls, hit with bare hands or leather glove, a kind of handball, played indoors or out on an enlarged, two-sided squash court, fourteen different official versions, courts appearing in many guises in Spain and France, seeing one, something like knowing you’re in Basque country. Tell her you are a winner Bermeo, that you have style Bermeo, knowing the Basque beret (txapela) is a trophy, the word for champion, txapeldun, for the one who has a beret.

At harbour’s throat, iron in rock Bermeo, concrete promenade, salty sea under foot, sunburnt homes once carved from the forest, taken from you by fire: the fire of guns, the fire of Nazi and fascist, the fire of conquest and carelessness; the fire of gas for meals, dreams and nightmares, at last, your offshore gas field more for dreams.
Climb the harbour steps to the sculptured woman, hand to her lips in desperate hope and expectation of arriving boats, men, boys and husbands safely returning from the sea’s clutches with a fine catch, or else attacked, drowned and forever sunk from view, leaving widows, grieving parents and distressed children.
Overhead, the Torro de Ercilla, the Ercilla Tower, last survivor of thirty towers to the walled city overlooking centuries, three floors holding memories of fisher people, trade unionists, poets and wealthy gentlemen, strange bedfellows of finance and fraternity, of uneasy relations. Dark city walls stand intact, the west gate sullen against your Eighteenth century town hall, Bermeo’s elegant new dress paraded before your central square in rare moment of frivolity.

Festival approaches. Your men hover around gas bottles preparing for evening celebrations in the park, fair ground trappings of sweets and games and contests, outdoor cooking men’s business, aprons on, stall with ‘ETA’ written across it, ‘socialista’ and ‘independienzia’ within- three or four nationalist flags flying from high balconies.  A weightless man clings to a hundred colourful balloons begging you to buy before he floats away. Technicians on stage wrestle wires, test lights and puffing fog, jewellery maker and fortune-teller offering beauty and hope.

In lengthening port shadow, sunlight and people shift to high street’s procession, led by the tall grotesque, a thin man draped in deep blue, wooden face framed by flowing horsehair mane. Man on stilts leans forward with cold accusative eyes, lurching one way, then another, unpredictable and frightening, like the centuries. Small children in folk dress follow, boys with beret, girls in scarves, carrying hay, wearing smocks, smiles and aprons. The audience applauds the young women in folk dress, carrying drums, beating out a single note, a missing beat, the same note following- sombre, militant, as restrained as a funeral.
Mothers and grandmothers follow, the elder women holding dolls, pride of tomorrow. Today’s cooks and medicos follow, again with drums, again the missing, heart-stopping beat of past and future sorrow. The men in black berets, steel blue shirts and the white scarves of honour are pictures of manly strength, marching to the same beat, same sorrow, declaring readiness for tomorrow’s courage.
Precious Bermeo. Staunch Bermeo. All that you have, Bermeo- and all that you might be, passion and sorrow beneath your forest blanket.



©GMcDougall

Cahor, France. A camino city.