This is Spain

I went to Pamplona with the idea of using it as a jumping point to see more of Navarra, the autonomous region of which Pamplona is the capital, which is kind of Basque and kind of not. Then I remembered that in addition to having been to Pamplona twice, I spent days walking through Navarra on the Camino de Santiago. I really do suck at planning. I had never been to southern Navarra, though, so that's where I came.

The first thing to know is that the term Basque Country means different things in different contexts. If you're talking about the entire Basque Country, which lives in Spain and in France and is also known as Euskal Herria (Basque for land of the Basque speakers, or something like that), you're talking about seven provinces (each with its own dialect of Basque) -- three in France and four in Spain. If you're talking about the Spanish autonomous region also called the Basque Country (Pais Vasco), you're talking about three of the four Spanish provinces (Vizcaya, Álava, and Guipúzcoa); the fourth Spanish Basque province is Navarra, which is also its own autonomous region. (Or if you're in France, you might mean the three French Basque provinces -- I didn't ask anyone there what exactly they mean by Pays Basque.)

However you define it, the Basque country is mostly full of steep green hills and small farms -- it's not flat enough for big farms. But driving south from Pamplona it flattens out fast and suddenly there are big flat fields everywhere; it turns into central Spain, basically. Because you can do more with the land down here, people like the Romans wanted it more than they wanted the rest of the Basque country, and the Basques lost influence. Which means it's not really Basque here at all.

Basque and Spanish are both official langauges in Navarra, but down here nothing is translated into Basque because no one speaks it. The bars don't have sidra, and no one rows on the river. (I still don't understand how Basque rowing is different from any other kind of rowing, but regardless there's no south Navarran rowing.) I've seen exactly two Basque flags all day (in Pamplona you see at least two flags per block, if not per building), and they were old and tattered and neglected. I even went to the city (of Tudela) museum, knowing I'd probably be bored, just to see if it had anything Basque. It didn't. It had information about the Bronze age, and some other ages, and the Romans, and the Muslims, and the Jews and the Inquisition, but no mention anywhere of anything Basque. And I looked.

It's not like the people here suck, and there is still jamon. But tomorrow I'm on the first train back to Pais Vasco.