Donosti was Different. Part I

For a start, when I arrived waaaaay back in 1980 it wasn’t referred to by most people as Donosti(a), but rather San Sebastian. And San Sebastian was unlike anywhere else that I had lived until then – basically the UK, north Italy and a few stints in the USA. So different indeed that I realised when I started preparing this piece that it wouldn’t all fit into one article. So it is in two parts. Starting with the “good” bits.

I was 24 and single. I discovered “The Old Part” of San Sebastian. And fiestas. Despite being brought up very close to Blackpool, not exactly in its heyday but still very “lively”, I had never come across so many bars in such a small area with so many people, young and old. All having genuine fun, the atmosphere festive and unthreatening – not one drunk or fight to be seen. You didn’t have to pay upfront. There was nearly always somewhere open at any time of day or night. The tradition of groups of retired men (kuadrillas) doing the evening rounds of the bars drinking their txikitos “small wines”, up to 20 or even 30 a night, and bursting into glorious song in Basque, songs which everybody appeared to know the words to, was in full swing. Obviously prices were appreciably lower, allowing for inflation, than now.

It has to be said that quite a lot of this wine was Savin, a particularly poor industrial wine that was produced in a factory near the river; what wasn’t consumed locally was shipped out in trains of rusty tank wagons to the unsuspected rest of Spain. The pretty hideous taste was masked by the large bottle being cooled in long troughs of running water that all bars had. Needless to say the noise, smoke and rubbish on the floor were immense. Single women could wander home at any time of night without any worries. Unfortunately, things have changed a little since then.

There was, however, one street in “The Old Part” that, if you knew, you didn’t venture down – Juan de Bilbao, a hotbed of radical Basque nationalism. I didn’t know, at first, and one afternoon I accepted an invitation from a female student to go for a drink at her place. Which turned out to be the heaviest of the heavy bars in that street. Let us say that I was treated with more than a little suspicion – a policeman?, CIA? – and conversation was null, with everybody switching to whispered Basque. Never been so happy to get out of a bar in my life!

And talking of women, as I arrived in September and the beach season was still very open I was pretty blown away by just how attractive the local girls were. On the other hand, it has to be said though that the common saying back then was totally true. “Getting laid in San Sebastian isn’t a sin. It’s a miracle”. Well, in my case anyhow.

The fiestas were something else again, a riot of good-humoured drinking, singing and dancing. This is when I was introduced to the idea of “gaupasa” – an all-nighter – and kalimotxo, a diabolical mixture of cheap red wine (even worse if Savin) and cola. The Carnival had only been resurrected three years previously and was still great fun. One big difference from now is that nearly everybody participated in one way or another instead of being bystanders with phones, if only by dressing up. My effort, not having any money and fewer ideas, was to slip into a bolster pillow cover to use as a dress and it certainly raised a fair few eyebrows as I was an extremely unconvincing woman. I also learnt that shaving your legs is both painful and not a great idea. In the interest of balance, I would just like to say that I did manage to hold down a full-time job when I wasn’t partying.

No need to go into the food, San Sebastian is now famed worldwide. Back then it was perhaps not so sophisticated but it had the great virtue that it was not as dear as today, even an impoverished TEFL teacher could afford a few weekend pintxos (Basque tapas). I also had the great luck, although I was ignorant of it that time, to be able to eat in El Bodegón Alejandro back when its chef Martín Berasategui was almost unknown, and it didn’t cost me the €275 a head it currently costs!

There was a general feeling of joy, vitality and optimism which is sadly missing today, and it wasn’t just in Madrid with its “movida”. For example, San Sebastian was one of the triumvirate of cities – Barcelona and Madrid being the other two – that attracted top international bands. There were some magnificent concerts in the Velodrome, terrible acoustics and unbreathable air notwithstanding. In my first year alone the following bands played: The Clash; AC/DC; Genesis; Leonard Cohen; Santana; Eddy Grant and many more I cannot recall; any city would be proud to host these concerts. San Sebastian didn’t have a complete monopoly – completely by chance ( there were tickets available on the door!!) I was able to attend what Dave Marsh, Springsteen’s biographer, called “the greatest concert I have ever attended”, in Barcelona that Easter of ’81. The failed coup d’etat of February 23 was still fresh in everyone’s minds, Bruce was the first American rocker ever to play Barcelona, and that night was a very vocal reply to the old order and the affirmation of a new Spain. Spain, or at least the parts I saw, was fizzing and buzzing and boiling.

Talking of celebrations, Real Sociedad won the league for the first time in 1981. Not many people slept that night. I am sure our friends in Bilbao don’t mind me pointing out that la Real won back-to-back the next season too. Their ground, the now demolished Atocha, was small, old, uncomfortable and with many viewpoints blocked by pillars. In short it was just like a proper British football ground, you were so close that you could touch players taking corners if you wished, and the atmosphere was the same. Plus you could stroll up and buy a ticket at the gate for a reasonable price. What not to like?

With the fall of Francoism had come an outburst of political enthusiasm and a, unfortunately rather naïve, belief in a brighter future through the ballot box. The second General Elections in democracy were held in October of 1982. I was amazed by the non-stop coverage in the (limited) media, the discussions in the bars, the parades of vehicles though the centre for weeks before, deafening megaphones competing for your attention, paper flyers hurled into the air like wedding confetti. Down the central Avenida there were multiple superimposed posters on giant billboards and the lampposts were adorned with bunting as if it was the mother of all fiestas. The turnout was a record 80%, never it seems to be beaten. The Socialists won with a convincing 48% and another new page was turned for a more modern Spain.

Difficult to believe looking at Spain today, the fourth European country in numbers of immigrants, but when I arrived foreigners made up less than half of one percent of the population. Sometimes it felt like I was the only extranjero in San Sebastian. I was often treated as quite a novelty item. My unremarkable Honda 400 regularly drew large crowds of admirers. Our recent holidays in some of the more offbeat parts of Uzbekistan reminded me strongly of that forgotten feeling, the difference however is that nobody in San Sebastian ever gave me bread and fruit just for being foreign!! There were, so far as I remember, no people of colour with the very notable exception of a black municipal motorbike cop who rode a beaten up Sanglas and whose uniform hung off him in a way I’ve never seen imitated. He was the loveliest guy you could hope to meet, always with a smile on his face.

Just to be sure that I have not been idolising San Sebastian of the early 80s, I asked my wife if she remembered it as a special place. People born and bred in Bilbao are notoriously, and rightly, proud of their city. She looked at me like I was a complete idiot.

“Why do you think I left Bilbao to live in San Sebastian when I was just 21?”

A stupid question indeed.

Next time, the “bad”. There was a lot of that too.