Claudia and Martin Rodriguez de Almeida Sullivan live in Pasajes Ancho, Basque Country, Spain, with their grandmother, Glenda Daniel, and their parents, Fernando Rodriguez de Almeida and Nora Sullivan. Claudia is 11 and Martin is almost 9.
Glenda Daniel grew up in the Missouri/Arkansas Ozarks and moved to Chicago after college where she worked first as a journalist and later for a series of non-profit environmental organizations. In the 1990s, she moved with her family to Seattle, living there for a few years to realize a long held dream to live near both mountains and the ocean. In 2013, she retired to another haven of mountains and sea, San Sebastian in Spain’s Basque Country, where her daughter, Spanish/Basque husband and grandchildren now live.
Diana Friedman’s writing has appeared in literary journals, newspapers, blogs, and popular press magazines. In her fiction and non-fiction she covers a wide range of topics including environmental disasters, badly behaved children, international families, honey bees and the humans who love them, sex and rock and roll, highly anxious airplane pilots, and the generally futile search for the meaning of life. Diana is also a teacher and editor who enjoys helping people uncover and nurture their artistic and creative selves. She splits her time between the U.S. and San Sebastian, Spain. Read more about her teaching and editing and writing.
Born in England, Suzanna Guterl studied music and left after her studies to live in Germany with her German husband. This led to further wonderful years abroad in New York, Italy, Mexico, Georgia (USA) and finally in San Sebastian over 9 years ago. A wonderful place to raise their teenage twin girls. Suzanna has always loved music as well as art and has continued to play the flute and draw pictures wherever she has lived. She plays in different groups in San Sebastian, including the SuAnLo Trio, and draws whatever she loves. She had a couple of local exhibitions last year and is looking forward to having her next exhibition in Ekain Gallery in the old part of San Sebastian in August / September 2020, hoping that the current situation allows this and everything else to take place again of course! Living in the Basque country is a true inspiration as far as culture goes – a feast for both the eye and ear. Read more about her music here and view her artwork (on display and for sale) here
Heather Hamilton is a translator, locked down in Irun, on the now closed border between France and Spain. Luckily she is with her two young adult daughters and their cat, Jackson, who is providing an endless focus of adoration and amusement. She has been privileged to live in the Basque Country for 25 years, but still has hankerings after Donegal in the north west of Ireland.
Originally from Birmingham, England, Georgina Howard took a circuitous route to the Basque Country via Denmark, which she left, 20 years ago, resolute to unite her two passions: language and mountains (none of them particularly well-represented in Copenhagen). Since then she has lived in Ituren, a small shepherding hamlet of 24 people in the Basque Pyrenees, just an hour from San Sebastian, where she has dedicated her life to bringing up her daughter, Marion, and building up her walking and culture company, Pyrenean Experience. Over 1500 guests from all over the world have visited her home on a variety of Basque Mountain Experience Walking Holidays and Spanish Language Immersion House Parties. Although the advent of Coronavirus means a dire year for everyone in tourism it has allowed Georgina a reprieve to finish her book, ‘Kidnapped in the Basque Country’, and test her patience, and mothering skills, during lock down with a teenager on an isolated Basque mountain top!
Fourteen-year-old Amaia Bacaicoa Jones from San Sebastian has been keeping occupied during the lockdown by taking photos.
Originally from the UK, Krista Jones has been living in Spain for 27 years. She has spent the last 19 years in San Sebastian, where she lives with her Basque husband and teenage daughter. Krista is fluent in Spanish and French and works as a financial translator for a multinational firm. In February 2020 she won the “LoveReading Very Short Story People’s Choice Award” for her short story “Tea for Two”. She is also a member of MET Mediterranean Editors & Translators. As a linguist and self-confessed bookworm she loves everything to do with words, literature and language.
Andrew Molloy originally hails from north-west England, although due to Brexit is now fooling nobody as a newly-minted “Plastic Paddy”. He arrived in a very different Donosti in 1980 via a roundabout route of Telford-Durham-Manchester and Varese. Beguiled by the city and bewitched by his Basque wife he is still here living in The Basque Country – even if stints in London and Barcelona both intervened. Living in Urruña, a mere 30 minute commute to Donosti, he considers himself to be extremely lucky to be able to pick and choose the best the North and the South of The Basque Country have to offer. Still pretending to be a TEFL teacher and translator.
Gabriella Ranelli de Aguirre is an expert on Spanish and Basque cuisine. Considered the leading foreign observer of the Basque Culinary scene she appears frequently in mainstream and specialized media. She has filmed food and travel programs for the BBC, PBS and CNN as well as Spanish and Basque television. Gabriella holds a Masters degree in Viticulture and Oenology and as the founder of Tenedor Tours, the first culinary travel company in the Basque Country, has spent the last 25 years working closely with chefs to convey the wonders of Spanish foods and wines to the English speaking world. Gabriella was named one of the top 10 food guides in the world by The Wall Street Journal. She is a professor at the Basque Culinary Center, culinary educator for the Culinary Institute of America and runs Gabriella’s Kitchen, a cooking school and wine tasting center, in San Sebastian
Born in California longer ago than she’d like to remember, Carol Ungar came to San Sebastián on a whim in 1987 and never looked back. She is a translator by profession. However, while sitting in front of the computer turning Spanish into English may be fine when it’s raining out, come spring she’d much rather put on her walking shoes and share her love of hiking, history, architecture, and of course, Spanish food and drink. A walking, hiking and history enthusiast by inclination, Carol has been leading tours in Spain for over 20 years, working with both teens and adults, sharing her intimate knowledge of Basque and Spanish history, culture, and customs. Traveling with Carol allows you to experience Spain through the eyes of a local with the insights of an expat!