The Craziest Basque Fiesta There Is

Ever since the word 'Basque' was on my radar, there's been a special festival I've wanted to attend.

Yes. A goose. 

This is Antzar Eguna, the fiestas of a tiny coastal town in Bizkaia. Best explained by this video I shot:

Let's review. In this pueblo called Lekeitio, a fishing town of 7,000 inhabitants, there is a party that consists of groups of friends rowing out one at a time in boats to the middle of the port, where a rope is held on each end by a group of strong men. 

In the middle of the rope, there is a goose tied by its feet.  The designated rider on the boat, who is usually wearing white pants and a sweater, hooks his arm around the goose's neck and jumps out of the boat. The cord proceeds to be flung up and down, up and down, as many times as the hanger-on permits. We're talking heights of 30 feet, then, SPLASH, back down to the water.

It is absolutely incredible.

Without words. I could literally NOT believe my eyes. This is a dead goose....it used to be live, and after reading around I had expected to see a plastic goose. But no...they are several real, dead geese. So strange, so electric, so brute, so... Basque. It being a Basque festival (that dates back more than 100 years) there is some good eating to supplement the excitement.

The plaza and the winding streets of the city are littered with makeshift grills, where pancetta, chorizo, sausages and patties of meat are offered up to hungry spectators. Viewers take their places around the water, wearing shirts with their favorite boat's number and name scrawled on with white paint or chalk. Unless they are awesome old ladies, then they watch como Dios manda, from their bff's apartment above the water.

  It's like a football game, where tailgating is done in off of communal grills and with huge plastic cups of cider or coke and wine, and where the action takes place in water and rarely lasts for more than ten seconds a go. Incredible.

santo tomás, a tale of talo

It's that time of year again. December 21, the day of Saint Thomas in San Sebastián. One of the city's premiere parties, strategically located in the dead of winter as a preventative measure to guard against seasonal depression. 

The typical signs that festivity is abounding?

• The bar in front of my apartment, the mysterious bar, is open.
• Old men in boinas and three year old girls dressed like 90-year-old peasant ladies run wild in the street.
• People are breaking out into  song in the grocery store and the fruit man downstairs is whistling a particularly traditional tune today at 7am.
• Whatsapp is blowin up with friends trying to get you to the old town so they can invitarme.
• There are stalls of animals in strategically random spots around San Sebastián.
• The smell of frying pork fills the air of the entire city.

There it is, the infamous talo eta txistorra. Hello, txistorra. A brilliant sausage that's fatty (70-80% fat), tastes of garlic, and runs its paprika juices down your wrists as you eat it. It's better than you could ever imagine. And it should be, since my theory is the people here forego the pleasure of fresh corn in favor of corn flour to be able to provide the entire province with these tasty hand-pounded corn cakes.

You can do it yourself!

talo (Basque corn cakes)

• 350 g of corn flour
•  250 ml of lukewarm water
• a pinch of salt.

Mix the flour and salt, and begin incorporating water from the center, until you form a dough with the correct texture. Leave it to rest for 30 minutes and then make small balls. Roll them out with your hands from the center until you form a sort of thin round, which you then toast lightly on a griddle on both sides. Serve with fried sausage, morcilla, bacon, tenderloin, chocolate, etc.