Luciano Belandia, Kika’s father, has been a member of a gastronomic society all his life. A proud cook admired by men and women alike, his expertize has been honed over many years cooking two or three nights a week at the society for male friends. When he was younger and his work as a taxi driver gave him the odd free hour, he would drop by at other times too, to play a round of mus, a card game rather like whist. Now that he is retired he spends two or three hours a day there.
Luciano is not unusual. The societies, where men gather to eat, cook, play cards or organize various cultural and sporting activities, are to be found all over the Basque Country. Some clubs have only a few dozen members, others a couple of hundred. There are clear cut differences too between those of the various Basque provinces – Guipúzcoa, Alava and Vizcaya – both in the cooking and in the different types of activities to which the societies are commited. Those of Vizcaya, for example, are said to be more class-orientated. But broadly speaking all the societies run along the same lines. Each society has a headquarters where small groups of members or cuadrillas, each with their own cook or cooks, get together frequently for a drink or an evening meal. Bricklayer and government minister sit down together at the same table, to eat from the same dish and to share the same loaf of bread. Everybody is addressed in the familiar tu, rather than the formal usted form. As they would put it, every man is a nobleman. Each society has a number of by-laws governing many of their activities. New members have to be proposed by one of the existing members. A secret ballot is held by placing marbles in a little box; white for yes and black for no. If, when the count is made, not all the marbles are white, there is no hope for the prospective candidate, whoever may have proposed him.
Women have always been barred from becoming members, although now they may sometimes be invited to lunch on a weekday. Recently, for example, there was a major controversy even in the national press, after a well-known society refused to admit a female politician to a business dinner being held there. At Amaika-bat, Luciano’s society, women are admitted to the dining-room in the afternoon, but only with prior permission. What they may never do is set foot inside the kitchen. The only women allowed there are employed staff like a female cook who assists the members of larger societies on a regular basis and looks after the kitchen. With Basque men learning to share some of their leisure time with their wives, something to which they would never have confessed previously because it would have been seen as a sign of weakness, there is talk of change, and a small number of mixed societies have been formed. But the change is likely to be slow, for all the members of a society have to be in agreement for the rules to alter.
The societies and their laws date back to the nineteenth century although there is much debate over their precise origins. The first one started when a group of friends in liberal, mercantile nineteenth-century San Sebastián leased some premises in the old part of the city to cook and drink unaffected by the opening and closing hours of the cider houses. Each member had a key to the building and the larder, and everyone was considered trustworthy. But the societies’ roots lie deeper than that. Many people maintain that they grew up, in spirit at least, after the destruction of San Sebastián by the English in 1813, during the Peninsular War. Wellington had ordered Graham to lay siege to the city, which was occupied by the French, and after several days of fighting, the Anglo-Portuguese Army succeeded in breaching the walls. Then, in the hour of glory, came the senseless destruction which seems inherent in the nature of war. A tired and confused army vented its rage on the very inhabitants of the fortress it had come to rescue: they murdered, pillaged and burned, remorselessly razing the city to the ground in only a few hours. With indomitable Basque spirit, groups formed to organize the rebuilding of the town. Their members came from very different strata of society; there were priests and fishermen, bakers and magistrates. United by circumstances, they treated each other as equals. Eventually, they met together to have a meal, to talk and to agree as to what should be done. Out of these meals, it is said, grew the spirit of the societies.
Others say that their appearance can only be explained by the particular political mood of the time. By mid-century the Basque Country, like the rest of Spain, was divided between, on the one hand, traditionalist Carlist thought, which supported an absolute monarchy and the old regional laws or fueros, and on the other, progressive liberalist thought, which backed a republic or monarchy with power enshrined in the Spanish constitution and a uniform legal code free from class and regional privileges. The rural Basques were unquestioning defenders of Carlism, but San Sebastián, a city of wealthy and important traders, devoted to amusement and friendship, certainly tolerant and perhaps even selfish, wanted to do away with the old problems of customs duties between regions and was strongly liberal. It was in this climate that the societies first made their appearance, offering a suitable open, egalitarian atmosphere for entertainment and conversation. Today, the majority and the best known of the societies are still those of San Sebastián.
There is another theory too. Julio Caro Baroja, a noted Basque ethnologist, has argued that the birth of the societies must be allied to the traditions of sailors, who, he believes, spent such long periods away from their families, that there was a natural dichotomy between the lives of women – wife, children, mother, mother-in-law – and those of men. Each sex has his or her place, the women in the home and the man elsewhere. According to his view, the societies would have emerged against the background of the port with its bars and cider houses and on this was founded the concept of the importance of cooking and sharing meals. There is certainly some truth behind the idea of a dichotomy. Even today, it is not thought unusual that men should prefer the company of male friends to that of their nearest and dearest, and they themselves say that they do not only congregate to eat and cook but also to go in search of peace and quiet, the lack of the need to give explanations, or to make any sort of an effort. Nevertheless, the kitchen is the main pivot around which the societies revolve. At Amaika-bat, Luciano’s society in the old town of San Sebastián, the kitchen dates back to the early thirties when the club moved to the premises. Here, eight enormous gas stoves and two hotplates meet the needs of the current membership of 140. Beyond the cooking area are endless formica storage cupboards. The part of the kitchen which adjoins the dining-room proper is open-plan so that everybody can see what is going on in the holy of holies all the time. Above the stoves is an enormous black iron hood which extracts the smoke and smells.
Most of the ingredients in the kitchen larder are packed in small quantities, just the right amount for one session. For example, the oil is packed in quarter-litre bottles, and similarly the flour, sugar and the rest of the basic ingredients are measured out. When one of the members has finished cooking he clears up and jots down in the notebook what he has used that day and then pays. Nobody keeps account and there is never any money missing when the member in charge of the shopping collects the money needed for more ingredients.
Normally, society cooks prepare recipes that have been passed down orally from the farmhouse kitchen, the caserío, and the food of the fisherman. They understand the basics of traditional Basque cookery, learned instinctively, which they have added to with the passing of the years. What they attempt to do, perhaps the most difficult thing of all, is to make a personal contribution, but to remain true to the spirit of the original recipe. Each cook’s repertoire may only consist of three of four recipes, but he embroiders on them to make the most of what is in season, selecting the best quality produce for the dish, he often succeeds in creating the most elusive flavours that only patience and dedication, together with a real love of cooking and sharing, are capable of achieving. Here there is never any of the hurry you find in the professional kitchen. Dishes are talked of with affection. The cook takes his time and enjoys cooking for himself and even more for others.
Luciano’s specialities are all based on fish. Two dishes which are particular favourites with his group of fellow members are scrambled eggs with anchovies and gilthead in fisherman’s style. Luciano finds cleaning the anchovies so tiresome, that he buys them from one of the little stalls outside the doors of the Brecha market where the fishermen’s wives sell them ready to cook. Best of all are the tiny ones, to be found on sale once or twice a year, which are prepared in the following way.
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For a Revuelto de anchoas take a clove of garlic, leave it unpeeled, but cut a slit around the middle so that the flavour is extracted. Put a little olive oil in a frying-pan and in it fry the garlic clove until golden. Remove it and then put in the anchovies and cook on a low heat; a little chilli can be added to give them a special appeal. When they are cooked pour in the number of beaten eggs required, one or two for each person. Do not allow them to set too much. One of the secrets of this is to eat it immediately it is cooked. |
Luciano thinks that gilthead bream is very reasonable in price compared with other fish, and cooks it often at the society following a recipe passed on to him by a sailor friend of his fathers.’
Not all the dishes made by the society cooks are quite so traditional or straight forward. As a friend of mine from Zarauz explained, the society cook prepares the food with such tenderness that the professional chef may well find himself threatened more than once with competition. One of Amaika-bat’s most renowned cook’s recipes, for example, is red peppers stuffed with crab and prawns. This is an adaptation of a dish which with slight differences has leapt to fame in the hands of the region’s nueva cocina chefs. While the societies adopt little from nueva cocina, if the truth be told, they eye it surreptitiously from time to time. In the following recipe the cook has substituted cream for milk, and used béchamel instead of flour to thicken the sauce, in accordance with the good practice of the society cook, who only used the bare minimum of flour to thicken his sauces, and where possible, none at all. The peppers in question, pimientos del pico or pointed peppers, named because of their shape, are small in size and slightly spicy. The best are the piquillo ones from the Llodosa area in Navarre. Although they are delicious fresh, they are more often found canned.
Luciano is particularly proud of Amaika-bat’s renown for sporting activities. It is known for introducing hand-ball to the Basque Country, for its string hockey team and for its traineras, or small fishing boats propelled by oars, which have had innumerable successes in the races held in La Concha Bay. Sports and gastronomy may initially seem a strange mixture. In his book Comer en Euskalherria, Juan José Lapitz suggests it came about because in the forties, under the restrictive laws of Franco, the societies had to pretend that their main interest was something safer than political talk on a full stomach. A sport like pelota or rowing was the obvious choice.
Of course, since those days, the societies have changed a great deal. Until recently, many men went to them daily. Eating well and doing as one pleased went hand in hand and the societies constituted a working man’s answer to the restaurant. But now costs have escalated and become so expensive that having a meal at the society every day is becoming too dear for the traditional member. Moreover, the membership fees of many societies are very high. Patxi Belandia, Luciano’s son and Kika’s brother, paid seven thousand pesetas to join his society, Gaztalupe, fourteen years ago, but now it costs forty thousand, and its annual subscription is seven thousand pesetas. As a result of the prices and more general social changes, it is becoming increasingly difficult to attract young members, and the cuadrillas are begining to lose the mix of ages that they used to enjoy.
Nonetheless the societies are still greatly cherished. Patxi, for example, goes to Gaztalupe every day and cooks for his cuadrilla every Friday. It is a prestigious society and one of the largest. Usually on weekdays three or four members share the gas-range, but on a Friday there may be as many as seven of them. Sometimes they cook in silence, and always without interfering in their companion’s work. While Patxi is immersed in his task the rest of his cuadrilla go off to the bar opposite to have a drink. They are a group of twelve, the eldest of whom is in his seventies. Patxi in his early forties, is the youngest. When it is time to clear the tables they will help, but not to do the washing-up. They pay a woman who has been employed by the society to do that.
Patxi speaks of his cooking with the same precision that he manifests when he is actually doing it; he knows quantities, cooking times and oven temperatures by heart. He learned to cook by watching his amachu or mother, in the same way that most Basque men learn, whether they will admit it or not. He says that when he was young he would observe patiently how she made this or that dish and then he would reproduce it at the club, though adding his own ideas and style of doing things: this or that ingredient, a few minutes more or less, a bit of parsley. Normally, he works with a fixed price budget of about one thousand pesetas – or five pounds – per head, buying everything he needs at La Brecha market.
On special occasions, for example, when it is the birthday of one of the cuadrilla, or he is cooking for the Gobierno Vasco, the Basque Government, he gets the chance to spend a bit more and go to town. For these dinners he offers a number of tapas as an apéritif: ham, oysters, prawns, asparagus and mayonnaise. Carefully, he slices the cured ham, which is a slightly sweeter version than those ones from further south, and arranges this on a plate in the shape of a flower. He keeps the oysters bought that morning on ice and needs only to cut some lemon quarters when he is ready to serve them. He will cook the prawns on a hot-plate, only on one side, for a couple of minutes, and no more. The special fat, white asparagus spears, the sort that come only seven or nine to the tin, must be the Horlando brand, his favourite. To make his mayonnaise, he puts two egg yolks in a bowl and begins to add a thin stream of olive oil. The wooden spoon turns tirelessly, the cook stirs on without changing his rhythm or stopping, or the mayonnaise might separate. It thickens and grows into a shiny mass in silence. Nothing must interrupt the cook’s concentration. Once he has obtained the required quantity he will whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the sauce to lighten it, together with a few drops of lemon juice and a pinch of salt.
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For the last dinner he cooked, the first course was a Sopa de fideos y carne. The main ingredients for this are a piece of shin beef weighing ¼ kg (9 oz), 2 thin leeks, 1 carrot and 1 onion. He fills a cooking-pot with 2 litres (3½ pints) of water and adds all the ingredients, then puts it on the heat for about an hour. At this stage he will remove the meat, clean it up and sieve the other ingredients, before adding them back into the stock, together with 150g (5 oz) of fideos, fine noodle-like pasta. To finish off the soup he will hard-boil 2 eggs in another saucepan and chop them and the meat very finely. This garnish is added to the soup just before serving and gives it an excellent texture. |
Patxi, like his father, prefers cooking fish to meat dishes, particularly hake and fresh cod in casseroles and sauces. He also likes to fry hake. ‘It may appear very simple’, he says with a smile, ‘but I think that frying fish correctly, particularly such a delicate fish as hake, requires a great deal of care and expertize.’
On the stove he heats a heavy, iron frying-pan containing quite a lot of olive oil. ‘The right temperature is essential’, he maintains. Egg-coated hake fillets cut into relatively small pieces of about 50 g each (2 oz) lie on a wooden board. Unlike some cooks Patxi uses only beaten egg to coat them, insisting that flour spoils the fine texture of hake. He adds two unpeeled cloves of garlic, and fries them quickly until golden, removes them and takes the frying-pan off the stove for a few seconds as the oil has heated up rather more than he wishes. Then he begins to fry the fish. He cooks only five of the hake pieces at a time, because he does not want them to stick together. After two minutes on either side, he lifts them out with the fish slice and transfers them to a plate covered with a white linen cloth which will absorb any excess oil. It is very important that they should be cooked just enough, that is, moist in the middle, but certainly not oily. He will serve the fish with a lettuce, tomato and spring onion salad.
Another of his favourite dishes is monkfish in its cooking juices. This he varies according to the occasion and season. Here is a springtime version with fresh peas. Sometimes he follows the recipe but adds ten large prawns as a finishing touch. Of course, they make it a more expensive dish. Sometimes he uses hake instead of monkfish, and perhaps some kokotxas instead of the clams.
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The sweet dishes that Patxi prefers to make are simple fruit preparations which are very traditional in Euskadi. To prepare Peras con vino, fresh pears in red wine, you need 1 pear, not too soft nor juicy, weighing about 150 g (5 oz) each. The other ingredients are 2 bottles of fruity red wine, a cinnamon stick, a little cointreau, the juice of 2 oranges and ¼ kg (9 oz) of sugar. He peels the pears carefully and pours the wine into an oven dish to which he adds the cinnamon, the sugar and the mixture of liqueur and orange juice. Then he places the pears in the wine and puts them into the oven to cook for three-quarters of an hour at 180°C (350°F, Gas mark 4). |
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Another of his favourite puddings is Baked apples. He chooses a good-sized apple for each person, washes and cores it, puts a little butter in the cavity, together with a small handful of currants and a tablespoon of sugar. He places the apples on an oven dish, adds a glass each of brandy and Marie Brizard liqueur and puts them into an oven pre-heated to 200°C (400°F, Gas mark 6). He cooks them until they puff up and are slightly browned, after which he puts them under the grill for a couple of minutes. The brandy gives them a very special colour and flavour. |
Although Patxi learnt to cook from his mother, is happily married and fond of his sisters, he is adamant that the societies are right in barring women. ‘It is quite enough that we already let them in at lunchtime. Dinner is quite another thing. Women always want to go where they are prohibited and the fact of the matter is that where societies have allowed them in, it doesn’t work. Ten years ago we all decided to have mixed lunches every day, but the truth is that the women interfere absolutely everywhere, where they had no call to do so. It was questions all the time. “What does your husband do?”, “You’ve bought a new car?” Worse still, they would come into the kitchen and talk nineteen to the dozen so that you couldn’t concentrate so we stopped it in 1980. Now, once again, they are allowed in at lunchtime, but they rarely come, I don’t know why.’
At three o’clock in the afternoon a member is sitting by himself playing Patience, another is rebottling the liqueur miniatures which were consumed during the week; only ten years ago he had to do this operation once a day. Without young people the future of the societies looks bleak but today they are still a stronghold of Basque character and for that there is hope. Not all Basque men belong to gastronomic societies, some of them have not the time or the inclination, nevertheless nearly all know how to cook. Patxi and Kika agree that one of the best cooks they know is Juan Cruz, who has never belonged to a gastronomic society. A dreamer and an adventurer whose favourite pastime is travelling, he says that he could never spend every evening in the same place, just as he could never settle into the routine of professional life as a lawyer. He prefers to share a good meal with his friends and frequently arranges spontaneous dinner or lunch parties on the spur of the moment. Juan lives surrounded by pictures and souvenirs, on the top floor of a beautiful old house in Calle 31 de Agosto, just a stone’s throw from Kika’s home. Although he has a small kitchen every detail in it is perfect. Nothing is missing: sharpened knives, all sorts of spices, a shelf full of vegetable preserves and fruit in different liqueurs that he prepares in the summer, oils flavoured with rosemary and thyme. On the terrace with its view of rooftops and church bell-tops pointing heavenwards, is a long marble trestle-table for summer parties and an asador or barbecue, where he can grill a nice bream or a dozen sardines fresh from the port. Inside are a solid-fuel stove which provides warmth on wintery days and pictures and souvenirs, plants and books.
Although Juan enjoys cooking traditional Basque food, his dishes are more open to outside influences than those of many other cooks. Curiously, he first learnt to cook in America, when a Basque friend found him a job as an assistant in the kitchen of a French restaurant close to New York. Later, he travelled down to South America and into the Amazon. ‘The American experience is compulsive’, he comments, ‘And it calls us back over and over again through the centuries, to discover virgin territory. People are so much more sensitive in Latin America, more generous and intuitive. For example, in Chile people say when they are awaiting the arrival of the first strawberries, “Wait until it is time for the durangos. You will see; the little fruits will be ready in a fortnight’s time.” ’
Cookery books are the source of some of his favourite recipes. From a recent acquisition he took this millefeuille of leeks, which in the photograph, at least, looked most impressive. He has added a few touches of his own to translate the written word into something truly delicious.
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To prepare Leg of lamb Juan buys the leg already deboned and then the only thing he has to do is to prepare the forcemeat himself and stuff and tie-up the leg with string. It then goes into a moderate oven 170-190°C (400°F, Gas mark 6) with a little olive oil, just to help it brown for about three-quarters of an hour. He cuts up a couple of carrots, 2 cloves of garlic and a medium-sized onion, removes the joint from the oven and arranges them around it. He will leave it in a moderate oven for another 20 minutes. After this he will go back into the kitchen, remove the roasting dish from the oven, transfer the joint to a serving dish and put it in the second oven to keep warm. He will stir a little flour into the juice of the meat, add 2 cupfuls of meat stock and cook this for a few minutes more until it thickens. He will strain the sauce to remove the carrot and onion and then pour a little over the slices of meat on the individual plates, carefully carved by Kika. |
When Juan makes traditional or classic dishes, he usually alters or adds to the recipe to suit his taste. Take as an example his version of tocinos de cielo, literally heavenly piglets, a kind of rich caramel custard, one of the most traditional of Basque sweets, also very popular in the rest of Spain and particularly in Andalucía. In order to counterbalance their extreme sweetness, he has made a light raspberry sauce, on which the tocinos sit.
Friendship and food, Kika believes, go together hand in hand. As far as she is concerned the greatest moments in life always take place around a table, without being in a hurry. It may be at home with your family, in the local restaurant, the gastronomic society or cider house, or in a bar sampling pinchos, or tapas while talking about the events of the day with a loved-one or friend.
Once a year in the middle of January, the gastronomic societies of San Sebastián open their doors to all visitors and women for the Tamborrada, probably the most important festival of the year, when small processions of drummers in military costumes and chef’s whites parade during the entire night through the old part of the town. Each procession of soldiers and chefs, or Tamborrada, belongs to a gastronomic society. Often two of the groups will meet on a corner or crossroads and the already deafening sound will double, forcing the followers of each band to retreat into nearby bars for a drink.
The practice of holding marathon drumming sessions is quite common in Spain. Luis Buñuel, the Aragonese film-maker, gave a wonderful description of the drummers of the little town of Calanda in his book My Last Breath: ‘When the first bell in the church tower begins to toll, a burst of sound, like a terrific thunderclap, electrifies the entire village, for all the drums explode at the same instant.’ Contrary to that almost sad ritual, the drumming in San Sebastián is joyful and exuberant, but the rolling sound of the drums has the same explosive power.
The excitement and tension of the festival builds up during the course of the evening. Before the official opening of the fiesta in the Plaza de la Constitución at midnight, families and friends feast together, either at home, dining on traditional fried elvers and barbequed bream, in restaurants or in the gastronomic societies on a menu enthusiastically prepared by the team of cooks given the honour of cooking for this grand occasion. Patxi Belandia invariably spends all day at Gaztalupe cooking, Kika and José Ramon go to a restaurant for dinner while Igor and Ivor are out on the streets of the old town, seizing here a piece of potato omelette, there a pinch of cod or a portion of Russian salad. Many of the bars have restaurants attached to the main building, or at least places to sit and order several of the specialities normally listed on a black-board placed where all the eyes can see it. Prawns, salmon, tunny cooked with peppers, fried anchovies, Russian salad, cured ham, anchovy omelettes, meat balls, snails, tripe, calves’ cheeks, small squid, scrambled eggs with wild mushrooms, scrambled eggs with fresh garlic and spinach and quail in sauce figure among many others. A long night lies ahead and everyone eats plenty so that they will not be hungry later.
As midnight approaches, the crowds pack into the old Plaza de la Constitución. On a large platform in the centre stand the drummers, half of them soldiers and half cooks, facing outwards in single file around the edge. The clock strikes, and the soldiers, clad in nineteenth-century French army uniform, begin to play real drums while the cooks, dressed in white with aprons, a red handkerchief round their necks and a tall chef’s hat, drum on small wooden barrels. Two conductors, one a soldier and one a chef, guide their respective bands. There are also seven cooks armed with an enormous wooden fork and seven soldiers with large pick-axes; they are led by a chef with the blue and white satin flag of the town and are drawn up opposite the civic dignitaries. The crowd’s high spirits are infectious and every distracting sound is drowned out by the deafening, but compulsive sound of the drums. Even the Lord Mayor keeps time with the beat. The atmosphere is electric, the pride of the Basque people in its land and customs almost tangible. The drumming suddenly seems to pound on and on, followed by one of six rolls. The crowd starts launching a barrage of missiles such as potatoes, tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs at the Mayor. ‘Well, it is our way of showing what we think of his performance as leader of the Town Council’, explained one man. Traditions are always important.
There are many different stories about the history of the Tamborrada, but on one point everyone is agreed. Until about a hundred years ago, there were more soldiers than civilians occupying the walled city of San Sebastián. At five o’clock each morning, the city’s bakers would fetch water from one of the town’s public drinking fountains, while the changing of the guard took place. From time to time, half teasingly, they would beat out a rhythm on their pitchers and barrels to echo mockingly the guard’s drums. There is little doubt that the cooks of the present-day parade represent those bakers.
Apparently, during the first fifty years in the history of the procession, the participants wore whatever came to hand. Then, one day a collection of old, early nineteenth-century French army uniforms fell into the hands of one of the gastronomic societies and they decided to wear these for the masquerade. By such degrees the present-day ritual evolved. However, the uniforms worn by the children for their drum parade, which takes place the following morning in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento overlooking La Concha, the shell-shaped bay, are a collection of more than forty different designs, including not only those of the French Army, but also ancient uniforms from many other countries.
Once the ceremony in the Plaza de la Constitución is over, the society’s tamborradas leave the premises in an established order and the crowd follows the parade as they process through the streets. From time to time a great crowd builds up in front of one gastronomic society or another and people start dancing, their arms held high, finding their way into the bars, or calling in at one, or several, of the best-known gastronomic societies.
Tonight, Kika and José Ramon will go to three societies. In Soraluce street they stop outside a building with half closed metal shutters: the Sociedad Gastronomica Unión Artesana, or Guild of Craftsmen. As the door opens and they step into a large room, with tables arranged along its length so that it looks like a cross between a restaurant and a bar, they are engulfed by music. A band is playing the city march, accompanied by members of the society who, still seated at the dining tables in tall chef’s paper-hats, are wielding drumsticks to beat on flat wooden dishes embellished with a paper knife and fork. The noise is deafening. Behind the bar, the waitress is serving endless cups of coffee, glasses of brandy and liqueurs. A group of members standing there greet Kika and begin to wax lyrical on the subject of their dinner, a five course affair. The sauce with the meat was exquisite; according to one, words could not describe the dish of elvers, according to another, ‘the cook bought them alive this morning and what is more, they were the black-backed sort’.
Soon Kika and José Ramon move on, this time to the most famous society of all, Gaztelubide. After a pitched battle to get through the doors they find a table where they can sit down and enjoy some more of the well-deserved bubbly so typical of the night. Soon the conversation turns to the societies themselves. Several young people maintain that they are on the verge of disappearing. According to one girl, most of the societies are now only patronized by old men, many of whom seldom do any cooking themselves, while young couples increasingly have dinner together at home or in the town’s excellent restaurants. Another pessimist argues that the Basques do not so much love cooking as enjoy eating well. But others disagree. ‘It is the love of good food that always moves us to cook’, said an older member who had overheard the conversation.
But, as others commented to me the year I saw the Tamborrada, the love of good food always moves us to cook. Maybe the societies will need to relax their rules barring women, but I do not think that that is the problem; as long as the love for food survives then the societies will go on flourishing