Festa! Pintxos and the Party in Basque Spain

San Sebastian was our aim, the limit of our capability. Budget tickets from Plymouth to Roscoff gave us 77 hours in mainland Europe. The Basque city - 550 miles from northern France - was as far away as our battered Nissan Vanette could take us. Arriving exhausted on a warm April afternoon, we rested amid sand and cool surf at Playa de la Zurriola, before heading to the hilltop suburbs to park for the night.

Leaving the van in the smart residential suburb of Aiete, Sam and I descended Paseo de Aiete, the temperature still twenty degrees as we reached the city centre at ten oclock. Near the City Hall (an elaborate central dome and twin sandstone towers testament to its opulent past as the Grand Casino) we passed sedate groups sipping wine on the sea wall as the light faded behind Monte Igueldo.

Strolling through the Parte Vieja, we emerged into Plaza De La Constitución. Pastel-tinged Baroque arches and columns rose on all sides, the most emphatic adorning the former City Hall at the square’s eastern end. In previous centuries, hundreds of people had roared from balconies as tormented bulls charged across the square at waiting toreros. As we sat at the Plaza’s edge, this brutal past was hard to imagine. The crowd’s roar was now replaced by busy chatter - spilt blood superseded by delicately poised glasses of red wine and small, skewered stacks of jamon, hake and anchovies.

Back on the old town’s narrow, cobbled streets, the party had livened up. We wandered between bars, buying a pintxo or two and a glass of wine in each. Bustle surrounded and engulfed us. Locals ushered us into space at the bar, imploring us to try favourite dishes, grinning as we reacted in broken, ecstatic Spanish to the earthy fire of chorizo and pimentón. The Parte Vieja was united in joyous fiesta. We were only there a few hours, but we stumbled back for cramped sleep in the van exhilarated by the conviviality and fierce culinary pride exhibited in San Sebastian’s pintxo bars.