In this guidebook to the Spanish and French Basque Country and Navarre, Murray Stewart covers the principal cities - rejuvenated Bilbao, beautiful San Sebastian, verdant Vitoria and lively Pamplona - and also delves deeper into the region's interior, capturing the quirkiness that make it so special

Whether you want to explore the Alhambra, marvel at La Sagrada Familia, or enjoy tapas, wine, and flamenco, the local Fodor’s travel experts in Spain are here to help! Fodor’s Essential Spain guidebook is packed with maps, carefully curated recommendations, and everything else you need to simplify your trip-planning process and make the most of your time. This new edition has been fully-redesigned with an easy-to-read layout, fresh information, and beautiful color photos. Fodor’s “Essential” guides were named by Booklist as the Best Travel Guide Series of 2020. Fodor’s Essential Spain travel guide includes: AN ILLUSTRATED ULTIMATE EXPERIENCES GUIDE to the top things to see and do MULTIPLE ITINERARIES to effectively organize your days and maximize your time MORE THAN 55 DETAILED MAPS and a FREE PULL-OUT MAP to help you navigate confidently COLOR PHOTOS throughout to spark your wanderlust! HONEST RECOMMENDATIONS FROM LOCALS on the best sights, restaurants, hotels, nightlife, shopping, performing arts, activities, side-trips, and more PHOTO-FILLED “BEST OF” FEATURES on “Spain’s Best Museums,” “Spain's Best Beaches,” “Most Beautiful Castle Hotels in Spain,” “Spain’s Most Beautiful Villages,” and more TRIP-PLANNING TOOLS AND PRACTICAL TIPS including when to go, getting around, beating the crowds, and saving time and money HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL INSIGHTS providing rich context on the local people, politics, art, architecture, cuisine, music, geography and more SPECIAL FEATURES on “History You Can See,” “What to Watch and Read Before You Visit,” and “What to Eat and Drink” LOCAL WRITERS to help you find the under-the-radar gems SPANISH-LANGUAGE PRIMER with useful words and essential phrases UP-TO-DATE COVERAGE ON: Madrid, Barcelona, Andalusia, Granada, Seville, the Pyrenees, the Canaries, Galicia, Asutrias, Basque Country,Toledo, La Rioja, Bilbao, Catalonia, Valencia, Ibiza, Costa del Sol, and more Planning on visiting Spain? Check out Fodor’s Barcelona and Fodor's Madrid. *Important note for digital editions: The digital edition of this guide does not contain all the images or text included in the physical edition. ABOUT FODOR'S AUTHORS: Each Fodor's Travel Guide is researched and written by local experts. Fodor’s has been offering expert advice for all tastes and budgets for over 80 years. For more travel inspiration, you can sign up for our travel newsletter at fodors.com/newsletter/signup, or follow us @FodorsTravel on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We invite you to join our friendly community of travel experts at fodors.com/community to ask any other questions and share your experience with us!

This title brings together walks and tours in the Basque region of Spain and France, which runs east from Bilbao to Biarritz and takes in famous places like Pamplona and stages on the Way of St James to Santiago de Compostela

On a transatlantic flight between Bilbao and New York City, a fictional version of Kirmen Uribe recalls three generations of family history—the inspiration for the novel he wants to write—and ponders how the sea has shaped their stories. The day he knew he was going to die, our narrator’s grandfather took his daughter-in-law to the Fine Arts Museum in Bilbao, the de facto capital of the Basque region of northern Spain, to show her a painting with ties to their family. Years later, her son Kirmen traces those ties back through the decades, knotting together moments from early twentieth-century art history with the stories of his ancestors’ fishing adventures—and tragedies—in the North Atlantic Ocean. Elegant, fluid storytelling is punctuated by scenes from Kirmen’s flight, from security line to airport bar to jet cabin, and reflections on the creative writing process. This original and compelling novel earned debut author Kirmen Uribe the prestigious National Prize for Literature in Spain in 2009. Exquisitely translated from Basque to English by Elizabeth Macklin, Bilbao–New York–Bilbao skillfully captures the intersections of many journeys: past and present, physical and artistic, complete and still unfolding. Bilbao–New York–Bilbao is the second book commissioned for the Spatial Species series, edited by Youmna Chlala and Ken Chen. The series investigates the ways we activate space through language. In the tradition of Georges Perec’s An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, Spatial Species titles are pocket-sized editions, each keenly focused on place. Instead of tourist spots and public squares, we encounter unmarked, noncanonical spaces: edges, alleyways, diasporic traces. Such intimate journeying requires experiments in language and genre, moving travelogue, fiction, or memoir into something closer to eating, drinking, and dreaming.

The Basques are Europe's oldest people, their origins a mystery, their language related to no other on Earth, and even though few in population and from a remote and rugged corner of Spain and France, they have had a profound impact on the world. Whilst inward-looking, preserving their ancient language and customs, the Basques also struck out for new horizons, pioneers of whaling and cod fishing, leading the way in exploration of the Americas and Asia, were among the first capitalists and later led Southern Europe's industrial revolution. Mark Kurlansky, the author of the acclaimed Cod, blends human stories with economic, political, literary and culinary history to paint a fascinating picture of an intriguing people.

Set against the historical background of Spain's unification as a modern state, this book is a study of a complex, frequently violent, political phenomenon - Basque nationalism - which after ninety years continues to constitute a major challenge to Spain's established political order. It examines the origins of Basque nationalism in the Basque industrial heartland of Bilbao in the 1890s and analyses its development up to 1980 when the Basque country finally achieved home rule. In particular, the book shows how Basque nationalism operated upon the residents of the Basque country, divided by culture, loyalties, divergent economic and political aspirations and history, to create a new and exclusive political entity - the Basque nation. The main fieldwork was conducted during the two years surrounding the death of General Franco in 1975, a period of exceptional violence in the Basque country that marked Spain's transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one. Using a theoretical approach, the book provides an empirical analysis of one of Spain's most intractable political problems during a decisive period of Spanish history.

Ask any Spaniard where you will find the best food in the country and the answer is invariably the Basque provinces. In this beautifully written book, Marìa José Sevilla describes the region through the eyes of men and women whose lives embrace every aspect of its cooking and culinary traditions, and records the recipes she has learned from them. The author takes us from market to caserìo, or farmstead, and shows how the strength of Basque cuisine comes from the quality and range of local produce: superb fish from the Cantabrian coast, cheeses and wild mushrooms from the mountains, and vegetables and fruit—including apples for cider-making—from the caserìos of the valleys. Through her portraits of a fisherman, a craftsman of wooden cheese-making utensils, a wine producer, and a young city housewife, the author shows the historical influences and fierce regional pride behind this distinctive culinary repertoire. Finally, three professional chefs take us into their kitchens, and show us how their superb cooking is based on rich popular traditions. More than eighty authentic recipes punctuate evocative descriptions of cultural and culinary traditions, making this an ideal book for the inquisitive traveler who enjoys good food.