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| Gaztelugatxe Island, Spain. Hermitage, including the stairs. |
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In June, my daughter Jennifer and a friend took a trip to
northern Spain, visiting Bilbao and the surrounding area before going to
conference in San Sebastian. While staying in Bilbao they did a day trip to the island of Gaztelugatxe, and to the towns of Mundaka and Gernika. I thank her for sharing her excellent photos and impressions of the trip with
The Intrepid Tourist. (This is Part 2 of her report.) |
| A cross outside the Gaztelugatxe hermitage with a sign saying “cross year 1891”. |
While visiting Bilbao, my friend and I took a guided tour to visit
nearby sites on the coast to the north. Our bilingual (Spanish/English) tour
guide picked us up at the Guggenheim Museum (which was walking distance from
our hotel) and took us by bus.
The first stop was San Juan de Gaztelugatxe Bermeo, a hermitage dedicated to Saint John the Baptist on the tiny island of Gaztelugatxe in the Bay of Biscay. The
church is believed to have been first built in the 9th century, but
it has burned down and been re-built several times, most recently in 1886. It
sits on an island with an impressive steep stone stairway with 241 steps.
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| San Juan de Gaztelugatxe sign outside the hermitage. |
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| Dragonstone path. |
While the hermitage has its own historical and religious
significance, it has recently become a popular tourist destination because it
was used as the filming site for Dragonstone, a fictional island in the Game of
Thrones series. The images in the series are digitally created but the stairs
and island are real.
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| San Juan de Gaztelugatxe church. |
Our next stop was Mundaca, which is a local fishing village
that is well known for surfing. We then went to Gernika, a Basque town (spelled
Guernica in Spanish) nearby. Gernika is famous for the terror inflicted by
Franco when he sent planes to destroy the town with bombs on April 26, 1937.
The attack is commemorated by Pablo Picasso’s painting
“Guernica”, which is currently on view at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid. The
Basque government has made a request to bring the painting to the town of
Gernika, but the request was denied At this time you can only see a tile replica
of the painting in the town of Gernika.
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| Tile replica of Picasso’s painting “Guernica”. |
Gernika is an important locale for the Basque identity, and
has been re-built into a beautiful town. The Basque people live in northeastern
Spain and southeastern France, and have their own Basque language (Euskara)
that is unrelated to other modern languages. Today the Basque region is
identified as an “autonomous community” within Spain.
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| The town of Gernika, Spain. |
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| The Tree of Gernika, an oak tree that symbolizes the freedom of the Basque people. |
