ACROSS THE BASQUE COUNTRY
ACROSS THE BASQUE COUNTRY
FISHING TOWNS, FARMHOUSES BUILT WITHOUT NAILS, AND A COAST WHERE OLD CRAFTS HAVE QUIETLY OUTLASTED THE TOURISTS.For the AW26 Sombra de la Sierra collection, we found our inspiration deeply in things built to outlast time. Along the Basque coast, we observed them everywhere: a bridge from 1893 that still carries people across the water at Algorta, a farmhouse whose pegged wooden walls have held for five centuries, fishermen and shipwrights, winemakers and pelota players, still working by hand, still passing their crafts on to the next ones.
Our sincere thanks go to everyone who welcomed us, shared their knowledge, opened their doors and accompanied us along the way. A special appreciation goes to the Spanish tourism board TURESPAÑA, which supported us alongside the journey. The AW26 collection carries something for each of you.
EXPLORE AW26
The route began on the Basque coast, where fishing towns and old ports still set the rhythm of the day. Outside Bilbao, a farmhouse restaurant has stood for more than five centuries. It became a restaurant in 1988, though the family behind it has worked the land for far longer, and its kitchen still turns out the plain, coastal cooking the region is known for: fresh fish and alubias, the local beans.
Further along the coast, an old transporter bridge from 1893 still carries traffic and passengers over the water at Algorta, hanging above a port that no longer sees much fishing traffic itself. A short way inland, market stalls in towns like Gernika open at dawn much as they always have, selling cheese, bread and milk made by the people standing behind them.
Nearby, a winemaker tends vines through the summer and sheep through the winter, making a natural, unfiltered Txakoli on a property that has stood for five hundred years. The wine is bottled young, some years lightly sparkling, and produced in small enough quantities that a difficult harvest can cut the yield by more than half.
In Bermeo, we met Javier Urrutia a young pelota player has been stepping onto the court since he was seven, playing a fast, physical game that can be genuinely dangerous.
"Pelota" is Spanish for "ball," but it's also the umbrella name for a family of court sports, most from the Basque Country and broader Spanish-speaking world, where players hit a ball against a wall, either with their bare hand, a wooden bat, or a curved wicker scoop called a cesta.The most famous variant is jai alai (called cesta punta in Basque pelota terminology), played in a long three-walled court called a fronton. Players use that curved cesta strapped to their wrist to catch and hurl the ball at extremely high speeds, it's often cited as one of the fastest sports in the world.
In Pasaia, a small non-profit workshop is quietly reviving a craft that had nearly disappeared: building wooden boats the way Basque shipwrights did in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Craftsmen have come from as far as Iceland and Mexico to work there, training a new generation in techniques that had gone almost entirely out of use. The coast gives way, eventually, to San Sebastián, where the Atlantic shapes the town as much as any street ever could.
