From the red of Espelette to the green of La Soule, “Echappées belles” in the colors of the Basque Country

“A Basque is neither French nor Spaniard; he is Basque and that’s all”, observed Victor Hugo during his trip to both sides of the border in 1843. To check whether this judgment is still worth a century and a half later, Sophie Jovillard takes the team of “Échappées belles” to these lands bordered by on the one hand cliffs, on the other hand mountains. It begins by presenting its homage to Espelette pepper, this queen spice that embellishes both piperade and chocolate. Once past the irritating selfie session on the village square, we learn that “the women were the first to work to introduce his seedin vegetable gardens and regional tradition in the 17th century.

Opportunity to recall that Basque society has the particularity of having placed both sexes on an equal footing. In the past, the house actually went to the eldest, whether he was a girl or a boy. A single imperative, that the etxe, “the house” in Basque, does not disappear, as explained in the magazine Pierre Ducassou, at the head of a masonry company. “We still call a lot of people by the name of their house”he recalls, although the domonym (name of the residence) ended up giving way to the patronymic in the civil status.

Read alsoThe piperade, totem of the South-West

The Basque Country is told from the stove. There is the talo, a wheat and corn pancake which forms, with sheep and belly, an unbeatable trio. Or the tuna of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, which made the fortune of the town, and continues to delight gourmets. At Kaïku, an exceptional restaurant a stone’s throw from the beach, it is snacked. It is a Japanese who assists the chef. The Basque terroir makes some Japanese cooks salivate, who open tables with a South-West accent in the archipelago. They particularly appreciate the animals of Pierre Oteiza, a rather media-friendly breeder to whom we owe the resurrection of a breed of pigs. The Kintoa, with superb fat. In the dryer where the haunches hang, a farm worker recounts his epiphany:I was supervisor at the college near Lille, then fell in love with the pig“. Happy man.

The Church of Saint-Engrâce

The team stops in front of a village fronton where we continue to hit the pelota. The presenter Sophie Jovillard tries it with uneven results. The rugby player Pierre Dospital, who proudly wore the blue jersey in the 1980s, is waiting for him in his bar-restaurant in Espelette. “During my career, I was happy to leave. And doubly happy to be back here“, he says. This judgment was undoubtedly that of the thousands of Basques who left for the Americas in the 19th century to seek their fortune. We can regret that the film does not give more voice to the elders, who lived through the last fires of traditional society. They would probably be more nuanced than some young people who are quick to thunder their “basquitude”.

Read alsoWeekend in Saint-Jean-de-Luz and Ciboure, the twin towns of the Basque Country

To hear the beating heart of the region a little differently, you have to push the trip inland, in Soule. Like crumpled paper, the valleys take turns up to the Pyrenees. The graces of technology bring us in a snap of the fingers to Saint-Engrâce. In reality, this village is only accessible by a winding road, and gives the impression of being at the end of the world. It was, moreover, until the 1960s, when the road went no further. A Romanesque church stands in the middle. But journalists, it’s a sin, do not evoke this place for long, where a faith that has come from afar seems to resonate. They prefer to go to another nave: the splendid La Verna cave, the largest underground room that can be visited in the world.