Spain’s Basque Region has three principal cities – Bilbao,
San Sebastian, and Vitoria-Gasteiz, each the capital of one of the three
provinces that make up the region . While Bilbao is the industrial and
commercial capital and San Sebastian the cultural and travel capital of the
Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz is technically the political capital of the
Basque region as home of the Basque region’s parliament. Like many places in
the Basque Country, the city has both Spanish and Basque names, in this case
hyphenated. Since the two languages have nothing in common the respective names
of the city in the two languages look nothing like each other, but the same is
true for San Sebastian, which is Donostia in Basque.


Alava province, centered on Vitoria-Gasteiz is the only
inland province of the three and is high and rather dry, sheltered by the
coastal mountain range from the rainy Atlantic coast and situated on Iberia’s
interior plateau. Vitoria is not a place with major must-see sights but is nonetheless
and absolutely lovely place with an elliptically-shaped medieval old town on a
low hill whose narrow alleys and plazas are lined with densely-packed
multi-story residential buildings . The city center also has spacious plazas,
two cathedrals and many smaller churches, and several art museums.


I arrived from Bilbao on a bus that took a circuitous route
around Vitoria’s modern outskirts, most of which look extremely pleasant. It’s
not often that I say I find a ton in Europe whose modern outskirts are almost
universally attractive. While most places in Spain are very clean and Spaniards
seem to be constantly sweeping and scrubbing, Vitoria is exceptionally
immaculate and affluent looking, spacious and green and with plenty of bike
trails.


The hostel in Vitoria was full so I had to walk around and
check out a few places before I found a pension with availability. I had to
laugh because the elevator was so small I could barely fit in with my backpack
and then had to back out because it was impossible for me to turn. Without too
much in the way of sights I spent most of the day wandering around old town and
its churches and museums and had a leisurely lunch and then evening of tapas
while watching locals play pelota/jai alai on Vitoria’s Chillida-designed Plaza
de los Fueros.