I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I’m not in Spain. If you happen to be an overachiever you may have looked up where the Basque Country is and said “Huh? That’s within the borders of Spain…. What is this crazy girl on about?” Plus of course Barcelona. Who doesn’t know about Barcelona? Isn’t it obviously in Spain as well?

Barcelona is in Catalonia, and as my new Barcelonan friends have informed me, Catalonia is not Spain. Quite a few people in Catalonia actually want to break away from Spain and form their own country. Not everyone of course…. but it’s not uncommon to see a Catalonian flag flying from someone’s balcony in Barcelona instead of a Spanish flag. One little birdy told me about a bit of resentment in Catalonia; they feel that their industriousness is wasted when the central Spanish government uses their tax money on services for the more impoverished (and supposedly more lazy) regions of Spain.

The Basque Country is also peopled by those who want independence from Spain. Like Catalonia, there is a different language, but unlike Catalan, Euskera seems to my ears as if it has absolutely nothing in common with Castellano (what I have been mistakenly calling Spanish for all these years). Euskera is the only non-Latin based language of Spain, and I have heard that it actually has more in common with Turkish than with Castellano.

Plenty of other aspects of the culture are far different as well. The folk music here for instance bears no resemblance to stereotypical Spanish music; it involves acordians and at times something that sounds a bit like yodeling. It’s pretty cool though, you should definitely look some up. The countryside of course is far different from your stereotype of Spain as well. Green forests (from all the rain), plenty of hills, and sheep out the wazoo.

That being said; for an Oregonian like me, the weather is perfect. Especially for a summer. Maybe I’m not in Spain, but that’s alright, I happen to like the Basque Country just fine.