Spain and Portugal for Visitors

Gazing up at the soaring tower, the young Spanish couple in front of us had more or less the same initial reaction as we did. "¡Qué cague! I'm not going up that!" Macho pride being what it is, he would probably have braved the ascent, but she insisted that they couldn't take the push-chair and its occupant up there, and naturally won - women with small children inhabit the same unassailable moral highground as little old ladies. I could have done with a small child to use as an excuse, myself, as my normally slight acrophobia seemed to be on its way to taking complete possession of me, but none was handy and no other rescue was appearing over the horizon, so the crossing was inevitable.

The ticket costs four euros one way, as opposed to the twenty-five eurocents of the gondola, which is a bit hefty but, I suppose, inevitable, as the lift on either side needs to be maintained and manned. Indeed, the young liftman who took us up seemed to be keeping an eye on us, for he returned, alone, three or four minutes after leaving us to gather our courage on the platform before launching ourselves onto the walkway, and insisted on bouncing up and down slightly on its wooden boards to show how safe it was. "Of course," he said, "if you insist on turning things over in your mind, thinking of how far up you are, or what the fall would be like, well, anyone could frighten himself, couldn't he?" As I was concentrating very hard in an attempt not to think of precisely those concepts, I did not argue (the other thing you really must not do is look critically at the planks making up the floor of the walkway. They are evidently sturdy, but unpolished boards have knots and flaws in them, and if you peer at them enough you will see holes and weak points where there is literally almost nothing between you and very thin air).

To make the whole process even more entertaining, the bridge authorities have posted a number of notice boards at observation points, with particularly jolly items of relevant information such as the number of bolts which fall out of the bridge every day, or the exact resonant frequency at which a number of people jumping up and down on the structure would cause it to collapse. El Transbordador de Bizkaia, s.l., now occupies a special place in my affections.

The views are stunning, though, and frankly make the journey worth doing. The historic centre of Portugalete, too, is very likeable, for its steep slopes and Basque folk architecture. The small garden in the square outside the Basilica de Santa María has a statue of a Cervantes-shaped figure reading a book, this being Lope García de Salazar, "Vizcaya's first historian." Actually, rather than the slight, sensitive figure depicted, Don Lope seems to have been something of a brute, "accustomed to obtaining what he wanted by force." He was a very powerful man in every sense, the Provost of Portugalete in the early 1400's, until he fell foul of his own eldest son who imprisoned him, when he occupied himself between escape attempts by writing the twenty-five tomes of Bienandanzas e Fortunas (by all accounts, stories of his own life and exploits intermingled with other episodes from the history of Vizcaya). He died at nearly eighty years of age, of poisoning or, in other words, someone else's impatience.

The Torre de Salazar in front of the basilica was built for military protection of the town, not by Don Lope but by a grandson of his, and has been rehabilitated as the sort of exhibition centre beloved by town councillors everywhere. On our visit (entrance is free), it held an exhibition of then-and-now photos of Bilbao's ría and the towns and industries on its banks, and it was interesting to note that some places in the area are actually even uglier now than a hundred years ago when Vizcaya's industrial revolution was in full spate.

For Portugalete is on the left bank of the Nervión, and for some reason left banks seem to suffer the privations and degradations of working-class conditions and grinding poverty more than right ones. Portugalete's neighbours like Barakaldo or Sestao suffered the horrors of rampant industrialism and uncontrolled capitalism for decades then, when recessions and changing economic conditions brought industrial decline in the seventies, endured unemployment and depression and it is no wonder they became hotbeds of radicalism before the European Union came to the rescue with the large sums for urban regeneration which have changed Greater Bilbao from a graveyard of shipbuilders and iron and steel furnaces into a tourist destination. Portugalete was never so working class or radical as Barakaldo or Sestao, but the contrast with the upper-middle-class Las Arenas district of Getxo on the other side of the river is still notable. And as you cross back over the river, this time at a reassuringly low level on the gondola, you might find it interesting to reflect on just what it is you are crossing. Bilbainos, more cosmopolitan and less nationalist than other Basques, call it the River Nervión, but the Euskaltzaindia, the Academy of the Basque Language, considers it to be the Ibaizabal, an affluent which merges with the Nervión (or the other way round) up in the hills above Bilbao, and the Basque Parliament even approved a motion in 1998 changing the river's name. The hydrological right is said to lie with the more Basque option, but Bilbainos have obstinately refused to adopt the new name, and in a double-barreled compromise it is nowadays often referred to, at least officially, as the Nervión-Ibiazabal.