'SOMEWHERE HOLIDAY', Part 6 - The Basque Country continues to fascinate......

I used to love football. I say this in the past tense, as it fails to get me excited or interested these days – angry and despairing, yes, interested, no. Call me a Grumpy Old Man (and personally, I am happy to wear the badge with pride), but it lacks the flair and honest passion that seemed apparent to me when I watched the likes of Best, Charlton and Law (sorry, the 1968 European Cup sucked me into Manchester United like millions of others). Instead, I have to watch snide sub-intellectuals who have abundant qualifications in cheating, acting and it would seem spitting in your opponents face when the referee isn’t looking. Call me old fashioned, but it doesn’t really do it for me like George at his best making an opponents defence look like a group of uncoordinated drunks. I could go on, but it would get very boring.

In this part of France however, the French have a game that will have you breathless just sitting in your seat. In fact, it’s the only live entertainment I have ever watched which made me forget that at all live events they make the seat so uncomfortable, you may as well be asked to bring your own concrete block. In Italy, every town, village and hamlet will have a football pitch. In the Basque country, you will find Pelota courts marginally more numerous than McDonalds – that’s to say, they are everywhere.

In it simplest form, it is a high wall that looks just like the back wall of a squash court, with a modest court (or ‘fronton’) laid out in front, but in its most theatrical and energetic format, it is a covered three sided battleground, with spectators ranged on stands at the open side. You could (just about) be forgiven for thinking this was just a glorified version of that old schoolground favourite (well, it was in my day!) of fives, but even the most seasoned fives champion from the back wall just behind the boys toilets at Richard Hale School during the early 1970’s would have been a cowering lump of mincemeat in this arena to the truly fast and furious. The game is believed to have developed from a Basque version of Handball in the 17th century, and found its true spiritual home in Spain. From there it was exported to Cuba and arrived in Miami in 1924 (the Americans steal all the best ideas). Apparently, it is played at its most serious and professional in Mexico, Cuba and Miami, and, I am told, ‘less competitively’ in southern Europe. Let me tell you, if what I saw was ‘less competitive’, then I suggest we simply round up some Pelota players from downtown Miami and send them after Osama Bin Laden, as I doubt he would stand a chance (unless he is a secret world class pelota player of course).

There are a variety of versions of this apparently contrived form of sport and entertainment, but probably the most popular is ‘Cesta Punta’, where players use a curved wicker basket strapped to their arms like some alien extension out of a John Carpenter Sci-Fi horror. In keeping with the gladiatorial theme, players wear hard hats, and strike their opponents down with swords. Okay, no, they don’t slay their fellow competitors with large glinting blades, but this has all the speed and ferocity of that sort of arena, without the loss of whole limbs and pools of blood. There are however frequent pools of sweat which have to be mopped up at regular intervals, and I can’t say I am surprised.

In simple terms, in the game of doubles that I saw, one team hits (or rather launches) the ball against the court wall to the right, and tries to do so at such speed and with such perverse angles, dips and sheer guile that their opponents can’t (according to my simple understanding of physics and the ability of man to move at modest speed) possibly return it – except they do. To describe this as a manic game of squash does not do it justice. Consider: one little research article tells me that it is not unknown for the ball to travel at 150 miles per hour – then ponder that this is not just a one off rampant serve from a pumped-up Sampras, but is the velocity that this small, hard, goatskin ball travels at each fling towards the wall and then rebounding back. Now take four white clad combatants as fiercely competitive as I have seen outside a Wales vs England Rugby scrum, and mix in with abundant and astounding skills in running, catching, twisting on a centime and hurling the ball back towards the court wall in one, flowing, seamless balletic movement. And all this with an unnatural appendage attached to your arm to apparently aid the process. I can only really liken it to an engrossing lifesize version of pinball, with all the unexpected movement, colour and adrenaline that you could imagine, and with a crowd almost as fevered as the play. I was utterly transfixed, I saw catches, moves and returns that I would not have thought were possible, and I was more caught up in the excitement than I have ever been at any sporting event, save possibly seeing dear old Nigel Mansell monstering a Ferrari through the old Stowe corner at Silverstone, looking like it was on rails, when the speed suggested it should have been demolishing the scenery. In fact, in one small lull, I caught my wife looking at me with a mixture of disbelief and amusement, completely taken aback that her usually implacable and unemotional old man was twitching, gasping and gesticulating like a ..well, like a twitching, gasping and gesticulating old man – a sort of Terry Wogan on speed, I suspect.

If you ever get the chance to go and see this astounding game, do not miss it. 20 years ago, I saw the even more ridiculous version where they play on a smaller, and more intimate, court, and merely have some frankly inadequate little wooden plates strapped to their palms to hit the ball against the wall. It is possible that they are all completely barking, but to me it is simply sporting competition distilled to its finest and most exciting elements.