El último lunes en Gernika

Last year's Último lunes de octubre in Gernika was a soaking wet affair. It poured rain, which made all the day's festivities a little less than pleasant, from wandering around the open-air farmer's market that covers basically the whole town, to drinking txakoli and cider in the street or trying pintxos of local cheeses, to listening to the lilting song/prose of bertsolaris, all of which are normally quite pleasant activities.

But this year--Redemption! A sunny, unseasonably hot day made lounging in the town square with a bottle of cider and a talo (a thick corn tortilla cooked on a grill wrapped around a hot sausage) the most enjoyable activity you could imagine.

And then we saw this wonderful poster in the window of the Gernika tourism office: "We don't want tourists, we want friends!" Well, plying the 90 000 people that came to visit Gernika that day with fresh food and festivities seems like a good way to start.