Things to do in the north of Spain
The Romans could never fully conquer the area, the Visigoths were plagued by perpetual uprisings, the Moors suffered their first setback here as they tried to sweep across the Iberian Peninsula in the 8th century and the most fearsome invaders of them all, 20th-century tourists, have so far managed to establish only a handful of beachheads. While the rest of Spain fell under the influence of one marauder after another, the country's northern coast, along the Atlantic Ocean, remained determinedly independent.
A Spanish saying has it that in summer, the rich go south and the wise go north. For south, read constant and often blistering sun, packed beaches, and non-stop flamenco-flavored discotheques. The northern coast, on the other hand, offers thickly forested mountainsides, intensely green hills, and lush valleys and meadows to offset the stormy sea and the wave-battered cliffs.
The entire coast from San Sebastian, just 12 miles (19 km) from the French border, to Ribadeo, 272 miles (435 km) to the west, is prone to dampness, mist, fog, a fine drizzle called sirimiri by the Basques, and just plain rain. But when the sun shines, the numerous beaches equal the best of the south. Many of these sandy stretches are isolated and remote, protected by rugged cliffs, just as this area and its peoples have been throughout history.
The Atlantic coast of Spain
Things to see in Santander and Bilbao
The Atlantic coastline edges four traditional regions practically distinct nations unto themselvesthat in the post-Franco era have become four of Spain's 17 comunidades autopnomas (autonomous communities). Our route covers three of them, ending just inside the fourth. It starts out at San Sebastian, the queen of northern Spain's beach resorts, in the thick of Basque Country. Westward beyond the bustling industrial port of Bilbao, the route leaves behind the Costa Vasca (Basque Coast) and enters Cantabria, perhaps the most Spanish of the northern regions, with its attractive coastal capital of Santander. Still farther west, the route reaches Asturias, a gorgeous, little-visited, emerald-colored region with a coast known, appropriately, as the Costa Verde (Green Coast). It then ends just inside Galicia, another culturally distinct region steeped in history and rich in folklore.
The Basque people
If the Basques are a mystery to many Spaniards today, they completely stump anthropologists, as well as philologists trying to ascertain the origin of the Basque language, euskera. It has no apparent linguistic connection with any other language, and nobody knows where the extremely complex tongue came from, but it certainly predates the arrival in Europe of the Indo-European languages some 3,000 years ago. A sampling: Egunon (pronounced eygoonawn) is Basque for good morning or good day; goodbye is agur (ahgoor); thank you is eskerrik asko (ehskehreek ahsko).
Recent research has tried, with little success, to link euskera to European languages such as those still spoken in the Caucasus and among the Berbers of North Africa. Indeed, there is considerable evidence that the Basques are the last surviving descendants of Europe's aboriginal population.
Although the Romans did occupy parts of the Basque region, they had a difficult time of it. Plutarc and others described a poor, warlike people with strong tribal features. The Basque Country was the last area of southern and western Europe to be converted to Christianity, and one of the last corners of Europe to be civilized. Many Basques still live in isolated homesteads of fewer than 30 people.
These abodes are flat-roofed, Alpine-style farmhouses known as caserios where occupants sleep upstairs but share the downstairs with their animal;. The Basques always had a highly individualistic way of life and they were renowned as North Sea whalers until the 18th century and they had little use for central control, especially from outside the region.
Not only did this attitude cause potential invaders to leave them alone, but it also meant that they enjoyed a long tradition of great personal freedom at a time when most of Europe lived in serfdom. By the 15th century, these liberties were enshrined in the fueros, a body of ancient laws and privileges that were taken away from the Basques in Spain only well into the 19th century.
The region's mysterious language, immunity from invasion, life in remote settlements with little or no central government, and the freedoms of the fueros all help to explain the current political turmoil, in which Basques have been seeking greater self-rule within the Spanish state. Though Spain's post-Franco constitution gives them a good deal of autonomy, more radical separatists still seek total independence.
Toward this end, since the 1960s a group called ETA (the euskera acronym for Basque Homeland and Liberty) has waged a campaign of violence that has in recent years lost much of its impetus and popular support. Terrorism in Euskadi (the Basque Country) today is a relative rarity, and not considered a danger to foreign tourists.
Basque history culture and language
The Basques are the most indomitable of all the Spanish peoples as well as perhaps the most fun-loving of those in the north. They enjoy a reputation for being the biggest drinkers and the heartiest eaters in Spain, and for having the best food, whether it's traditional fare or the new Basque cuisine that is all the rage (the restaurants in Spain rated highest by the Michelin guide are Basque).
Local specialties include such distinctive dishes as cogote de merluza (baked hake's head), kokotxas y almejas (hake gills and clams in a lemon, oil, and parsley sauce), angulas (tiny silvery elvers, or young eels), bacalao al pil pil (cod in a Bilbao-style green sauce ), porrusalda (leek, cod, and potato stew), marmitako (fresh tuna, tomato, and potato stew), and alubias (beans).
Equally distinctive are the folk traditions of the region. Rural sports are an integral part of the Basque culture. The only Basque sport widely known outside the region is pelota (related to jai alai), but others include wood chopping, grass scything, rock dragging by bulls, and ram butting (these, not surprisingly, have not caught on elsewhere). Any fiesta will include traditional dances such as the aurreska which honors the Basque flag, or ikurriiia and the espatadanza (sword dance).
They are accompanied by the simple music of the txistu (a three-holed tin whistle), and a small drum. Another musical tradition the Basques share with Galicians, Asturians, and other northerners is that of the gaita (bagpipe); the local version of the instrument produces a music more haunting and mournful than the Scottish variety.
Things to do in Cantabria
Cantabria is the name of the piece of Spain that separates the Basque Country from Asturias. The earliest evidence of human settlement in Spain, dating from about 25,000 to 30,000 years ago, has been found around Santander, the capital of Cantabria. The culture of these early settlers, who crossed the Pyrenees from southern France, peaked around 15,000 BC, which is approximately the date of several caves with prehistoric paintings located at Altamira, near Santander. The region also has numerous Roman remains.
The Picos de Europa Spain
Westward, and only 25 miles (40 km) inland, are some of Spain's most remarkable mountains, the Picos de Europa. These mighty, craggy peaks rise giddily from the Bahia de Vizcaya (Bay of Biscay) to form a buttress that divides Cantabria from Asturias. On the western fringe of the Picos is the Parque Nacional de Covadonga. The Battle of Covadonga in AD 718 marked the beginning of what the Spanish call the Reconquista, the reconquest of Iberia even though the Moors wouldn't be completely driven out of Spain until 1492.
After the battle, the tough Asturians, who earlier had fiercely resisted the Romans and were subdued only after a 10-year war (2919 BC), turned their attention to building churches and hermitages while the rest of Spain skirmished with the Moorish armies. Many of these early Asturian or pre-Romanesque buildings still stand today, constituting the best and most complete series of 9th-century edifices in Europe.
Asturias northern Spain
The Reconquista pushed the Moors southward, and by 914 Asturias had gained control of Leon, most of Galicia, and the north of Portugal. This power was ceded only when the Asturian kings moved their. court out from Oviedo and made Leon the capital of a combined Asturias Leon. In 1388, Asturias became a principality; ever since then, the heir to the Spanish throne has received the title of Prince of Asturias (just as the Prince of Wales is next in line to rule Britannia).
Much of Asturias today consists of red-roofed villages with their characteristic honeos (granaries built on stone supports several feet high) scattered over the green carpets of the valleys and meadows. But the storm ridden sea is the real spectacle here, and the uneven coastline exposes increasingly dramatic wave battered cliffs as the route moves toward Galicia. Local food matches the local character: strong blue Cabrales (sheeps-milk cheese, named for the eastern Asturian region of Cabrales), and a hearty stew of broad beans, pork, and sausages called fabada, are downed with fizzy, alcoholic sidra (cider), the drink of Asturias (also used in cooking, as in morcilla a la sidra, or blood sausage with cider).
Such a meal may be accompanied by the music of the gaita. Asturias also has several dialects related to Spanish, collectively known asbable (pronounced bahblay). Spanish pequeno (small) becomes piquenu, padre (father) gets shortened to pa, and the coastal city of Gijon is Xuon. Bable however, is heard mostly in the countryside.
Anyone driving the entire route across Spain's northern Atlantic coast including the two or three inland excursions, should allow several weeks to do it justice. Most of it features fine scenery, sea, fishing villages, beaches and mountains but there is also the bustle and shopping of Bilbao, Santander, Oviedo, and Gijon. From Bilbao westward into Galicia, the route is paralleled by a narrow gauge railway line that is a travelers' dream.
The FEVE line is slow and cumbersome (the state-owned RENFE rail network has long since taken over as the region's primary means of ground transportation), but it skirts beaches, runs across estuaries and through limestone gorges, and is often surrounded by forest and hills.
For a more comfortable ride, catch the Santiago de Compostela San Sebastian luxury train called El Transcantabrico, which takes a leisurely eight days to travel the northern Atlantic coast. A bus leaves from Santiago for a Ferrol, where passengers board the train, complete with a full service restaurant. The excursion (from west to east) includes guided tours of Ribadeo, Oviedo, Cangas de Onfs, Covadonga, Santillana del Mar, Comillas, Santander, and Bilbao.
San Sebastian and Galicia
The main road joining San Sebastian and Galicia has recently been improved, but construction continues, and an occasional rough stretch can slow down part of your trip. Maps can barely keep up with improvements (don't be surprised if your car rental map is out of date), so ask questions before you get under way. Note that some street names in the Basque Country may use the word kale (street) in addition to or instead of the Spanish calle.
Airport Car hire in Galicia Bilbao Santander and Gijon Spain
If you prefer to do your own exploring in Galicia, Bilbao, Santander or Gijon, you can book a car at your destination airport in Spain before you fly. Car hire in Spain is reasonable and you can take advantage of some great offers and 50% cheaper deals when you pre-book your rental car before you travel.
A Spanish saying has it that in summer, the rich go south and the wise go north. For south, read constant and often blistering sun, packed beaches, and non-stop flamenco-flavored discotheques. The northern coast, on the other hand, offers thickly forested mountainsides, intensely green hills, and lush valleys and meadows to offset the stormy sea and the wave-battered cliffs.
The entire coast from San Sebastian, just 12 miles (19 km) from the French border, to Ribadeo, 272 miles (435 km) to the west, is prone to dampness, mist, fog, a fine drizzle called sirimiri by the Basques, and just plain rain. But when the sun shines, the numerous beaches equal the best of the south. Many of these sandy stretches are isolated and remote, protected by rugged cliffs, just as this area and its peoples have been throughout history.
The Atlantic coast of Spain
Things to see in Santander and Bilbao
The Atlantic coastline edges four traditional regions practically distinct nations unto themselvesthat in the post-Franco era have become four of Spain's 17 comunidades autopnomas (autonomous communities). Our route covers three of them, ending just inside the fourth. It starts out at San Sebastian, the queen of northern Spain's beach resorts, in the thick of Basque Country. Westward beyond the bustling industrial port of Bilbao, the route leaves behind the Costa Vasca (Basque Coast) and enters Cantabria, perhaps the most Spanish of the northern regions, with its attractive coastal capital of Santander. Still farther west, the route reaches Asturias, a gorgeous, little-visited, emerald-colored region with a coast known, appropriately, as the Costa Verde (Green Coast). It then ends just inside Galicia, another culturally distinct region steeped in history and rich in folklore.
The Basque people
If the Basques are a mystery to many Spaniards today, they completely stump anthropologists, as well as philologists trying to ascertain the origin of the Basque language, euskera. It has no apparent linguistic connection with any other language, and nobody knows where the extremely complex tongue came from, but it certainly predates the arrival in Europe of the Indo-European languages some 3,000 years ago. A sampling: Egunon (pronounced eygoonawn) is Basque for good morning or good day; goodbye is agur (ahgoor); thank you is eskerrik asko (ehskehreek ahsko).
Recent research has tried, with little success, to link euskera to European languages such as those still spoken in the Caucasus and among the Berbers of North Africa. Indeed, there is considerable evidence that the Basques are the last surviving descendants of Europe's aboriginal population.
Although the Romans did occupy parts of the Basque region, they had a difficult time of it. Plutarc and others described a poor, warlike people with strong tribal features. The Basque Country was the last area of southern and western Europe to be converted to Christianity, and one of the last corners of Europe to be civilized. Many Basques still live in isolated homesteads of fewer than 30 people.
These abodes are flat-roofed, Alpine-style farmhouses known as caserios where occupants sleep upstairs but share the downstairs with their animal;. The Basques always had a highly individualistic way of life and they were renowned as North Sea whalers until the 18th century and they had little use for central control, especially from outside the region.
Not only did this attitude cause potential invaders to leave them alone, but it also meant that they enjoyed a long tradition of great personal freedom at a time when most of Europe lived in serfdom. By the 15th century, these liberties were enshrined in the fueros, a body of ancient laws and privileges that were taken away from the Basques in Spain only well into the 19th century.
The region's mysterious language, immunity from invasion, life in remote settlements with little or no central government, and the freedoms of the fueros all help to explain the current political turmoil, in which Basques have been seeking greater self-rule within the Spanish state. Though Spain's post-Franco constitution gives them a good deal of autonomy, more radical separatists still seek total independence.
Toward this end, since the 1960s a group called ETA (the euskera acronym for Basque Homeland and Liberty) has waged a campaign of violence that has in recent years lost much of its impetus and popular support. Terrorism in Euskadi (the Basque Country) today is a relative rarity, and not considered a danger to foreign tourists.
Basque history culture and language
The Basques are the most indomitable of all the Spanish peoples as well as perhaps the most fun-loving of those in the north. They enjoy a reputation for being the biggest drinkers and the heartiest eaters in Spain, and for having the best food, whether it's traditional fare or the new Basque cuisine that is all the rage (the restaurants in Spain rated highest by the Michelin guide are Basque).
Local specialties include such distinctive dishes as cogote de merluza (baked hake's head), kokotxas y almejas (hake gills and clams in a lemon, oil, and parsley sauce), angulas (tiny silvery elvers, or young eels), bacalao al pil pil (cod in a Bilbao-style green sauce ), porrusalda (leek, cod, and potato stew), marmitako (fresh tuna, tomato, and potato stew), and alubias (beans).
Equally distinctive are the folk traditions of the region. Rural sports are an integral part of the Basque culture. The only Basque sport widely known outside the region is pelota (related to jai alai), but others include wood chopping, grass scything, rock dragging by bulls, and ram butting (these, not surprisingly, have not caught on elsewhere). Any fiesta will include traditional dances such as the aurreska which honors the Basque flag, or ikurriiia and the espatadanza (sword dance).
They are accompanied by the simple music of the txistu (a three-holed tin whistle), and a small drum. Another musical tradition the Basques share with Galicians, Asturians, and other northerners is that of the gaita (bagpipe); the local version of the instrument produces a music more haunting and mournful than the Scottish variety.
Things to do in Cantabria
Cantabria is the name of the piece of Spain that separates the Basque Country from Asturias. The earliest evidence of human settlement in Spain, dating from about 25,000 to 30,000 years ago, has been found around Santander, the capital of Cantabria. The culture of these early settlers, who crossed the Pyrenees from southern France, peaked around 15,000 BC, which is approximately the date of several caves with prehistoric paintings located at Altamira, near Santander. The region also has numerous Roman remains.
The Picos de Europa Spain
Westward, and only 25 miles (40 km) inland, are some of Spain's most remarkable mountains, the Picos de Europa. These mighty, craggy peaks rise giddily from the Bahia de Vizcaya (Bay of Biscay) to form a buttress that divides Cantabria from Asturias. On the western fringe of the Picos is the Parque Nacional de Covadonga. The Battle of Covadonga in AD 718 marked the beginning of what the Spanish call the Reconquista, the reconquest of Iberia even though the Moors wouldn't be completely driven out of Spain until 1492.
After the battle, the tough Asturians, who earlier had fiercely resisted the Romans and were subdued only after a 10-year war (2919 BC), turned their attention to building churches and hermitages while the rest of Spain skirmished with the Moorish armies. Many of these early Asturian or pre-Romanesque buildings still stand today, constituting the best and most complete series of 9th-century edifices in Europe.
Asturias northern Spain
The Reconquista pushed the Moors southward, and by 914 Asturias had gained control of Leon, most of Galicia, and the north of Portugal. This power was ceded only when the Asturian kings moved their. court out from Oviedo and made Leon the capital of a combined Asturias Leon. In 1388, Asturias became a principality; ever since then, the heir to the Spanish throne has received the title of Prince of Asturias (just as the Prince of Wales is next in line to rule Britannia).
Much of Asturias today consists of red-roofed villages with their characteristic honeos (granaries built on stone supports several feet high) scattered over the green carpets of the valleys and meadows. But the storm ridden sea is the real spectacle here, and the uneven coastline exposes increasingly dramatic wave battered cliffs as the route moves toward Galicia. Local food matches the local character: strong blue Cabrales (sheeps-milk cheese, named for the eastern Asturian region of Cabrales), and a hearty stew of broad beans, pork, and sausages called fabada, are downed with fizzy, alcoholic sidra (cider), the drink of Asturias (also used in cooking, as in morcilla a la sidra, or blood sausage with cider).
Such a meal may be accompanied by the music of the gaita. Asturias also has several dialects related to Spanish, collectively known asbable (pronounced bahblay). Spanish pequeno (small) becomes piquenu, padre (father) gets shortened to pa, and the coastal city of Gijon is Xuon. Bable however, is heard mostly in the countryside.
Anyone driving the entire route across Spain's northern Atlantic coast including the two or three inland excursions, should allow several weeks to do it justice. Most of it features fine scenery, sea, fishing villages, beaches and mountains but there is also the bustle and shopping of Bilbao, Santander, Oviedo, and Gijon. From Bilbao westward into Galicia, the route is paralleled by a narrow gauge railway line that is a travelers' dream.
The FEVE line is slow and cumbersome (the state-owned RENFE rail network has long since taken over as the region's primary means of ground transportation), but it skirts beaches, runs across estuaries and through limestone gorges, and is often surrounded by forest and hills.
For a more comfortable ride, catch the Santiago de Compostela San Sebastian luxury train called El Transcantabrico, which takes a leisurely eight days to travel the northern Atlantic coast. A bus leaves from Santiago for a Ferrol, where passengers board the train, complete with a full service restaurant. The excursion (from west to east) includes guided tours of Ribadeo, Oviedo, Cangas de Onfs, Covadonga, Santillana del Mar, Comillas, Santander, and Bilbao.
San Sebastian and Galicia
The main road joining San Sebastian and Galicia has recently been improved, but construction continues, and an occasional rough stretch can slow down part of your trip. Maps can barely keep up with improvements (don't be surprised if your car rental map is out of date), so ask questions before you get under way. Note that some street names in the Basque Country may use the word kale (street) in addition to or instead of the Spanish calle.
Airport Car hire in Galicia Bilbao Santander and Gijon Spain
If you prefer to do your own exploring in Galicia, Bilbao, Santander or Gijon, you can book a car at your destination airport in Spain before you fly. Car hire in Spain is reasonable and you can take advantage of some great offers and 50% cheaper deals when you pre-book your rental car before you travel.
Labels: Airport Car hire in Galicia Bilbao Santander and Gijon Spain, Things to do in Cantabria
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