Basque country bomb hits home
Basque separatist group ETA suspected of taking another life.
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A policeman was killed last Friday just outside Bilbao by a car bomb thought to have been planted by Basque separatist group ETA.
Had this been a week before, we probably would have left the hard and fast facts and comment to the newswires (sounds terrible, I know - but what with the pretty dismal state of, well, the world in general, we prefer to keep things peppy round here). But every once in a while incidents like this hit home with a stiffer punch.
You see, just last weekend HUCK was in San Sebastian soaking up that Basque country vibe. The San Sebastian Surfiilm Festibal was in full swing and the local crowd were out 'n' about doing their thing (i.e. being openly affectionate in a way that puts most Brits on edge; smoking like demons; and power-eating their way through rounds and rounds of Pintxos - which is basically Tapas only way, way better.)
Some very nice girls had innocently agreed to let us follow them around for a whole weekend and document their every move (the story will be winging its way to you in HUCK#016). And, taking full advantage of their insane hospitality we were, quite frankly, loving it.
"So, what do you think of San Sebastian? Beautiful, huh?" was how every local greeted us, post the obligatory double-cheek kiss.
"I'm Basque, through and through..." said our host Ibon on more than one occasion.
Coming from London - a place where making eye contact is considered either weird or, worse still, harassment - the warmth and hospitality that greeted us was pretty astonishing. Most refreshing of all was seeing an entire community speak of their home with such admiration and pride. Something us Brits could do well to acknowledge every time we whinge about the weather instead of bigging up where we live (it's grey, get over it already.)
Which brings us to last Friday. A bomb. A life lost. The latest in a string of more than 825. Another beautiful country overshadowed by an extremist few.
Loathe of engaging in political dialogues we ostensibly know bugger-all about, we just wanted to say thanks to the people of San Sebastian for showing us that pride is never a bad thing in and of itself. How you choose to express that pride, however, is another thing altogether.
Aio!
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Basque country bomb hits home (text) by Andrea Kurland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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