Territory, Landscape and Law in Three Images of the Basque Country

R. Mohr, University of Wollongong

Article comments

This book chapter was originally published as Mohr, R, Territory, Landscape and Law in Three Images of the Basque Country, in Taylor, W (ed) The Geography of Law: Landscape, Identity and Regulation, Oxford, 2006, 17-32.

Abstract

Spending time in the Basque country while preparing a contribution to a workshop on landscape and identity focussed my attention on how the Basques were expressing their own identity in their own characteristic and lovely landscape. On arriving in Bilbao a few weeks before the regional elections in 2001, I read the Spanish newspaper El Mundo's description of the Basque landscape as a "Gulag", where the populace lived in fear of terrorism and xenophobia. This was hardly the first impression that came to my mind as I walked streets full of election posters, shoppers, and groups of people dropping in to bars to meet friends over a glass of wine.