I arrived in Bilbao on Tuesday 19th July, after a bit of a turbulent landing, to see the runway glistening from a recent deluge that had left puddles all across the shining tarmac. It felt like coming home; not just because of the crap weather, but because I’d adored the place last year. That said, it was also a relief to set foot in Euskadi (Pais Vasco or the Basque Country is you must) after a mind numbing 5 hours in Brussels Airport where a pair of coffees set you back €17.
Such trifling complaints were furthest from my mind a couple of hours later when, showered, snoozed and freshly attired, I sampled a half litre Voll Damm, in the appropriately named Stadium Bar that lay wreathed in shadows from the lee of San Mames. Typically enough, I kept flicking on to Twitter for updates in the Percy Main v Morpeth town pre-season game. It ended 2-2 and I had another beer to celebrate, while noticing that in 12 months no appreciable progress has been made on the new San Mames that is growing, slowly, opposite to the original Cathedral of Bilbao sport. However, on arriving in Vitoria I realised this is par for the course with building projects in Euskal Herria, as the Gasteiz basketball arena is without a roof about a month from the season starting and the road outside our hotel, the wonderful Desiderio on San Prudencio, looks as if a team of archaeologists are resurfacing it with toothbrushes and miniature trowels.
In the future, few people will ask you where you were when Amy Winehouse died. Even fewer will inquire as to your whereabouts when Percy Main and Washington shared 10 goals in a pre-season kick about. My answer, if asked, would be in the small town of Azpeitia, en route Donostia / San Sebastian, watching Real Sociedad beat Corsican visitors Ajaccio 4-0 in a friendly game, played not at the impressive Anoeta home of “Txuri-urdin,” but the more modest home of Tercera Division side CD Lagun Ognak. Same as last year when I saw Alaves play at Deportivo Betono, I seem cursed to watch La Liga sides in Tercera Division municipal grounds. Still it was football, though the complex also had a Pelota court, which is one weird Basque game that is like a particularly technical version of SPOT.
Indeed we watched the highlights of the Sociedad v Ajaccio game after a Pelota programme on EITB1, in the Taj Mahal curry restaurant in Donostia. It didn’t matter about not understanding the commentary as a CD of Foster & Allen’s Greatest Hits was playing instead. Welcome to the global village….
After 5 nights in Vitoria and 2 in Donostia we came back to Bilbao for 2 final nights. What a city it is! Despite having shops named Coventry and Derby, the place has loads more in common with Newcastle than the East Midloands. Not just a love of football, a history of heavy engineering, the status of being the regional capital, but a strong and abiding love for public art. In Newcastle we have The Baltic and SJP; in Bilbao it’s the Guggenheim and San Mames. They’ve got “Puppy by Geoff Koons and we’ve got Anthony Gormley’s “Angle of the North,” though I notice the scale model in Brussels Airport has gone. Bilbao Airport had enough crazy, fascinating metal scultures to keep me entertained until the plane took off.
On the tour of San Mames, it’s wonderful to see an exhibition of imagistic portraits of football pitches as well as some serious wigged-out Henry Moore style football sculptures. Amazing stuff. Strangely, in a land where kids all play tiki taki on concrete basketball courts to hone their skills, I saw more Chelsea replica shirts than Athletic Club ones. However, I’ll not hold that against my amazing fourth home, behind Newcastle, Ireland and Slovakia, the magical Euskal Herria.
** Euskara for “a bunch of thyme”
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