Every country shares common places. The Basque people inherit, among other things, what Voltaire called "pétit peuple" who jump and dance on the Pirenees.The quotation is underestinating, because it forgets many essential references: the mistery, the magic, the cohesion of the landscape, those "fern melted into tears" mentioned by Gabriel Aresti, that "enchanted forest" from Oma, which is a metaphor of the Basque Country, that "psalm of factory" by Blas de Otero, the Zalakain from Baroja, the poetry in the game of cards (mus) played by the farmers that mentions Unamuno, the inner force in the works of Oteiza or Chillida..., a microcosm between the sea and the mountain, a dolmen, a pelota court, memories of a whole, a seapull, stone, "irrintzi", the blueish smoke coming out of the chimney of a farmhouse, the essence of thousands of flavours.
Our land jumps, dances, vibrates and welcomes. Hospitality began next to that farmhouse the poet Elizamburu described: "Do you see the dawn coming out of the top of the mountains, a white farmhouse among four oak trees, a white dog at the door, and a stream pasing by?. There is where I live in peace.".
I don't know anybody who comes back from the Basque Country not feeling something new, of plenitude and maybe with a dark legend denied. It is the satisfaction of the joy of life, of seeing, of smelling, of communicating and eating, of loving. "Mistery offers to the Basque people a powerful fascination", writes my greatly admired Jan Morris. The traveller will discover that this magic is still alive. That mistery is not only part of the origins, but it floms from the mother earth, from the sea, from a rocky place or a beechwood, from the legend and the history, from the people, from the fog that covers the prehistory caves and lets us read the message: "Welcome, you are at home". Ongi etorri.