Having not been to mainland Spain for around 30 years, I had mixed feelings about returning. On the one hand, I was curious to see how it had changed. It had been a long time, and I wondered whether my mental picture of the place remained in any way valid. On the other hand, after “doing Spain to death” in my teens, thanks to frequent family holidays, I wondered whether another trip to Spain really justified the opportunity costs.
Visiting Bilbao and the Basque Country offered a couple of insights that, with hindsight, could have been reasonably inferred. First, I had never visited this part of northern Spain, so any comparison with the southern “Brits abroad” zones is likely to be misleading. This is a wealthy part of the country, much closer to and more integrated with the big western European economies. San Sebastián had a French Riviera feel in almost every sense, while Bilbao felt economically confident and self-assured in a way that seems increasingly uncommon in similarly sized UK cities.
Of course, one curiosity is that many locals would reject the idea of the Basque Country simply being Spain, which further complicates any longitudinal comparisons.
Anyway, I greatly enjoyed visiting this part of the world. It did not change my view that Spain is not a priority for me, but it did underline that there is no one true Spain, just as there is no one true England. Both are the sum of their parts (and much more), and those parts can sometimes look and feel as though they belong more to other places than to the countries they are attached to and associated with.
I’m in no great rush to return to Spain per se, but parts of it remain very interesting, so I’ll just see how things play out. A work trip to Cádiz is quite likely in 2027, so I’ll see what fancies that tickles.
Dr Martin James 