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NotebookApril 2000 Life in Basqueland On The Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky The dour city of Bilbao, located on the Basque coast of Northeastern Spain on the Bay of Biscay, has not exactly been an attraction for tourists to the peninsula over the years—nothing, that is, compared to the varied allure represented by Seville and Granada, or even Madrid and Barcelona. Something still remains of Bilbao’s rustbelt past; it is a city of some 400,000, renowned throughout Spain as a center for banking, steel mills, shipping, and shipyards. As a cultural force, it has always represented a liberal mercantile counterpoise to the rural, conservative tendencies of the Basque people. The city survived three horrendous sieges by the reactionary Carlist forces in the nineteenth century, and it was almost razed to the ground by General Francisco Franco, who viewed the short-lived Basque autonomous government in Bilbao (permitted by the republic) as a mortal threat to his future domination of the nation, ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 18 April 2000, on page 85 Copyright © 2012 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/basque-coleman-2692
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A review of Molto Agitato: The Mayhem Behind the Music at the Metropolitan Opera, by Johanna Fiedler, Covent Garden: The Untold Story, by Norman Lebrecht, Valery Gergiev and the Kirov: A Story of Survival, by John Ardoin.
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