Back to Blighty for a quick turnaround, and then Anne & I set off for the last month and the last lap of our year-long marathon. We took a tour by car across southern France.
All our other overseas outings in this saga have either commenced with a tense time at Heathrow, or else with nearly as tense a time travelling P&O. Without exception we have on those journeys experienced threatening timetables, wayward crowds, stressed-out officials wielding daft Covid regs, and serial delays interspersed with moments of high anxiety.
The oddest setback we encountered was when an X ray machine at airport security misplaced one of my shoes: two went in, only one came out, and the security staff didn’t think it was their problem for me having to proceed one-shoed to my next country. Fortunately Anne was at hand to advise this sort of thing happens with my socks in her machine all the time. So we put the one shoe back under the scanner and – voila! – out came two, after all: sorted.
This outing was different, and at last Anne & I got it right: we took a method of transport that takes the care to put customers first, and at their ease; and in consequence restores the requisite joie to travelling. Brittany Ferries from Plymouth took us first to Eddystone, to see dolphins frolicking there, before setting course to arrive at Santander. It took 20 hours, and left us calm relaxed and ready to go.
Our first couple of days were spent in Bilbao, a place we hadn’t seen before. For most of our lives, Bilbao was an unattractive destination, because it was synonymous with Basque separatists, who conducted one of the longest conflicts of all time. But now they’ve achieved the level of independence they’re going to, they’ve spruced up their city, and in 2018 they finally completed the ceasefire arrangements they undertook … 20 years before.
Anne & I found the first delight upon entering the city is its attractive size and shape, nestling on a river bend between two lines of mountains. The main city is therefore walking-sized and has a campus-friendly atmosphere. Off stage are the necessary facts that three-quarters of the population is out of sight in burbs beyond the mountains; there is therefore a need for expensive road tunnels through the rock (which are now in place) to enable access from the component communities (who thereupon require parking spaces in town, which are simply not available: aargh!): and the place is prone to occasional tsunami-like floods.
The second delight is the sight of the spanking new buildings along the old quayside. The Guggenheim gallery designed by Frank Gehry is famous, but it’s merely the first among several equally-satisfying new buildings in that area, designed by equally-notable architects. Indeed, since Anne & I have in recent months visited the new waterside developments in London, New York and Sydney, we find ourselves to be now on first-name terms with the iconic buildings produced there by architects such as Renzo Piano (the Shard, Whitney Museum, the Barangaroo masterplan), Cesar Pelli (Canada Tower, Brookfields), Norman Foster (the Gherkin, Hearst Tower, Sydney Metro) and Richard Rogers (Millenium Dome, 3WTC, International Towers). So guess what, they’re all up and present in a showcase setting in Bilbao. Stellar! Marvellous! No wonder Bilbao has won awards for its redevelopment!
Contrarians may wonder how this stellar cast became involved in a small by-passed place like Bilbao; and they’ll wonder further why there was no local grassroots demand for these buildings before they appeared, and certainly with no explicit involvement of the Spanish national government in Madrid. But that would be churlish.
The wonder of the Bilbao Effect, or the Bilbao Anomaly, as the Wall Street Journal has it, is that such a largescale town improvement project has been implemented to time and to budget, and with widespread agreement among the politicians, the critics, and the public at large. No one can recall whether that’s ever happened before.
We enjoyed the atmosphere of central Bilbao. There was real family feeling among the people in the park in the early evening, the locals going late-night shopping in the cathedral quarter, the parties in the cafes of the old town square. Although it’s been a fishing port forever, Bilbao’s claims to city status are far more recent, and founded on the iron & steel industry established 150 years ago. This meant Anne & I were deprived of our usual activities, hunting down old buildings, historical characters and churches. Bilbao scores nul points in terms of Arts & Crafts Movement architecture, although there were a number of fine commercial buildings from the Belle Epoque and Modernist eras. And Bilbao was never troubled by the Vikings, although they received their share of depravity when the Nazis’ Condor Legion struck nearby Guernica.
The centrepiece of the city is the Guggenheim, and it looks lovely. In several ways the building is integrated into its setting, with links to the bridge the river the park and the neighbours. It is shaped like an apple peel, true; but it’s a well-engineered and gently titanium one, so that’s all right. It’s not oversized, and the surprise of its appearance continues to satisfy over time: so it doesn’t fade or tire as it becomes familiar. Evidently it’s popular among locals, who walk past it in their daily lives; and even more so among visitors, for whom it is the particular draw to come to Bilbao.
Anne & I went to check it out. Unusually in these still-sensitive times of Covid, there were plenty of visitors. But what was their reason for coming? In all the publicity that drew us, too, to the place, there had been no mention of its contents. Carrying the Guggenheim name was a big promise, but that turned out to be empty: because their only contribution is to lend small numbers of their second-ranking works. The other temporary exhibitions we saw were so-so: one concerned cars, including some items supplied from Beaulieu; and the other a selection of modern art from Paris which as usual made overclaims for all things French: this time, that Surrealism originated in France.
The reality is that the Guggenheim in Bilbao is a pretty big bubble, with no great artworks to show. Its disadvantages are that it has no links with other galleries in Spain; it started with no collection of its own, and later overspent on the just half a dozen (somewhat blowsy) pieces it did acquire. This means its other 17 galleries (17!) have to depend on attracting travelling exhibitions: that other galleries might agree to supply, and that Bilbao’s visitors might want to see. Quite frankly there isn’t the quality or quantity for that; and so, after 25 years in operation, it looks unlikely the Guggenheim will ever achieve its potential to offer large volumes of quality art that will truly entertain, move and inspire.
Does that matter? Well it’s true the museum has for the time being demonstrated that its easy-going public is for the time being satisfied with its somewhat easy-going fare. But real competition may now be approaching. Over in Santander, the Botin Foundation, having 6000 works of art in their collection, have just opened a new gallery designed by Renzo Piano. And, up the hill, the long-standing Bilbao Museum of Fine Art has just commenced a redevelopment designed by Norman Foster. Anne & I visited the latter, and were delighted by the quality and variety of pictures presented. In particular, they have a series of works by local artists over the last 100 years, which offer a window into the culture of Basque country.
One item put the point forcefully. An international design exhibition held in Paris a century ago at first omitted to include the Basques, but at a late stage invited them in. How did the small group of Basque designers respond to this challenge, which required them to find agreement among themselves to represent their people in the international arena, at short notice and in a space of 15’ x 12’? (Answer: they created a stageset of a typically Basque hallway, having bright pictures of village life, and plenty of examples of craft furniture and textiles).
So how serious are the Basques now? As their lead city, Bilbao certainly has a fierce national pride, a tortuous history of political troubles, and the sad decline of its once-proud heavy industries. It is the Belfast of Biscay. When Anne & I saw that story of the furniture, we naturally wondered what kind of progress the Basques have made in the last 100 years.
Back then, they were engaged internationally, and recognised. Now Bilbao looks in some ways a closed community. We noticed on the streets (and checked on Wikipedia afterwards) very few residents come from elsewhere in Spain, and practically none from other countries. Basque is spoken at school; public buildings are designed by foreigners; and the football team won’t select non-Basques. How closed-minded is that?
The answer is it’s a winning strategy for the region, to pursue a course apart from the rest of Spain. Stereotypically, the Basque people have the gritty qualities of self-reliance associated with their old fishing and mining communities and now they have new small manufacturing industries which are thriving. By contrast, most other Spanish regions are dependent on real estate and tourism financed by debt, and they are all currently suffering in consequence. For some nations, disengagement is the right course (but not for Scotland, obvs).
It was only when we arrived in Bilbao that Anne & I learned they have poor weather: colder wetter and cloudier than anything we’d expected. In all other respects, the place was attractive to tourists: inexpensive, friendly, and with good fresh food. For a short visit, it’s lovely.
Fast forward, and after leaving Bilbao the furthest we reached was Sanremo, which is in the Italian Riviera. This meant travelling past the enchantments of Monte Carlo, Cannes and Nice. It also meant travelling at high speed along cliffside roads, darting into tunnels and out over hairpin bends, just like the last scene of The Italian Job.
Sanremo is one of a series of old fishing towns on this coast, all perched on small hills leading down to little ports. They rest against a great long black cliff and, until they built the roads in out and around those cliffsides, each place was hardly accessible by land, and tantamount to being an island. Like Bilbao, Sanremo’s so close to the national border it doesn’t entirely belong to its own country – and for many years its provenance was in the balance.
Sanremo shot to fame 150 years ago, when the first of the Riviera hotels was built. This was a new concept in the 1860s, a generation before e.g. the Savoy and the Ritz were opened in London. The first four were named Londres, Brittanique, Royal and Angleterre, so the marketing strategy was pretty clear. Taking advantage of long-distance train services, and the ideal climate, visitors were encouraged to visit, and to stay. It was mostly English to start with, but quite soon there were other Europeans, well-to-do refugees from health problems, boredom (that would be the Royals – Ed), or political upheaval (that would be the Russians – Ed). For more than 50 years these colonies of settlers thrived, and brought tennis tiffin and vicarage garden parties to the place. Then, just as suddenly, in the 1930s they were declared non grata by the Fascist government and asked to leave.
Anne & I dropped by to find out what’s left. The answer is a curate’s egg. The relics of those far-off days remain, with those hotels still standing albeit some are more boarding house than luxury watering-hole. We went for the big one, the Hotel Londres, built in 1860 and patronised by both Dickens and Garibaldi. Its food is excellent, but its décor is distressed (or rather, Anne became distressed just looking at the colours); and its clientele is so… well backstage, really. My hopes of catching the eye of the next generation of Dickens, or Garibaldi, came to naught.
Beyond the continued existence of Sanremo’s hotels, we were delighted to hear play on the old Victorian tennis courts. There remain, too, several small churches that were erected to serve the various communities of the English, natch, and also the Russians, Ukrainians, Romanians and Germans as well.
There are memorials to Tchaikovsky, who went to Sanremo, and composed; and Elgar and Liszt, who went, but didn’t. There’s a garden named after Monet, who visited and painted a picture, and then left; but nothing for Edward Lear, who lived 20 years in Sanremo and is buried there. So is Alfred Nobel, and his house is now a museum. So is Thomas Hanbury’s (a plutocrat from Shanghai – Ed). In fact, the work of Hanbury’s gardener is even more appreciated, through half a dozen botanical gardens established up and down the place.
And, speaking of curates, we tracked down the work (and museum and library – Ed) of the Anglican vicar Clarence Bicknell from next door Bordighera, who published studies of the region’s flora and also its cave paintings. His instinct was not just to record nature but to improve on it, and he chose to introduce some specimen plants from overseas to his Riviera garden. In fact, he selected the strangler fig, from Queensland (qv), which probably behaved in his lifetime but, 100 years later, has now taken over the place, devouring all the trees fences and gateposts lying in its path.
So much for Sanremo’s glamorous and continuing past. Unfortunately, its present appears at first sight to be dowdy and down at heel: because the classical Riviera international trade has long gone bling to France, and because local second-homers have preferred the next-door towns of Ospedaletti and Bordighera, which are sleeker and with better beaches. Townie daytrippers coming to Sanremo from along the coast are just not the same.
Without its former glitz, the town appears to have reverted to sorry levels of decline, with years’ worth of overdue repainting, and the remaining central medieval warren of streets representing not so much charm, as a backdrop to Gothic thoughts of menace. For a moment Anne & I considered Sanremo to be simply 50 years past its sell by date, like Blackpool.
However, we were guilty of judging by appearances. Italian towns take a bit of getting used to, with their make-do-and-mend attitude to maintenance in general and to utilities in particular. With time we saw that the place functions well enough, with a busy street market twice a week, and decent crowds mid-season supporting its many restaurants and cafes. And, for a provincial town, Sanremo does have its share of successes. Its local farmers have taken advantage of the new autoroutes, by switching production on their terraced mountain slopes from citrus to high-quality flowers, which are grown in glasshouses that glint down from the horizontal stripes of the hillsides.
One blast from Sanremo’s English past is the continued running of the annual Milan to Sanremo bike race, which is the first and longest race in the professional tour. For a while there was also Formula 1 racing through the streets of this hilly town, but that was in the days of Fangio and Stirling Moss.
Since the 1950s, Sanremo has held a festival for popular new songs, and the city is now condemned as the originator of the format which became the Eurovision Song Contest.
More intriguing is something Anne & I stumbled on in what we thought was a disused house in the centre of the town park. It turned out to be the International Institute of Humanitarian Law, a think tank founded in 1970 which holds conferences for army officers going on peacekeeping operations/ teachers needing to explain modern conflicts to their pupils/ lawyers pursuing war crimes/ aid workers running refugee camps. Such topics are too important to be left to any one government, or even to the UN: and yet there is a serious need for clear communication and co-ordination across the middle-ranking participants who become involved in these issues. But you wouldn’t find such a think tank in London.
How inspiring that it should be Sanremo, with its history of one kind of international relations, and its competence in event-management, that should be the place for this activity that promotes decent international improvement.
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