Sketches from Spain
Pintxos Trail

"When I had done breakfasting the squire gave me a note addressed to John Silver, at the sign of the Spy-glass, and told me I should easily find the place by following the line of the docks and keeping a bright lookout for a little tavern with a large brass telescope for sign." Stevenson, Treasure Island










One only has to walk up from the Bahia de la Concha Bay to the Alamada del Boulevard to get firmly lost in the Pintxos Trail, said to be the densest quarter of such bars and eateries in the world.  The locals here do not waken again until the night time, dining as late as nine or ten at night, families or

friends, and following the clusters of crowds from Basque bar to bar, sampling and seeing friends.  It is said that this habit of the night for the Spanish might come from several things – outwardly friendly, their sociability might come from the many hours spent out under a warm sun where days

are long and that to make that day endurable there must be several times to break and dabble in whatever produce is available, most likely from the farm.  There is also the idea, as Hemingway described in his definitive book on bullfighting in Spain, Death in the Afternoon, that it was the heat that had descended on and stayed inside the cities at night, that made sleep a silly prospect.  The coolness does not come until nearer sunrise, when the locals can than, finally, close their eyes to get some peace.  It is not uncommon to follow the Pintxos Trail, along de Agosto and Narrica, all the

way through the night, purposefully meeting friends for meetings past midnight and finishing at the disco as the sunrise threatens off the horizon, all to the end of planning how this next day of work and sea and heat might play again.  One might stop at La Vina tapas (pintxos) not only for its own array of snacks such as Canutillo de queso y anchoa or the Croqueta de jamon, but most famously the Tarta de Queso, or cheesecake, to finish off the digestion for the night.  There would be at this moment, perhaps two in the morning for the common tourist, where there would be a certain quality of the fantastic as one made the way back to a hotel, standing there lit against the shimmer of the night sea,

that could only be rivaled by the books.  Ancient ramparts, imperfect now in their execution of line, crumbling after hundreds of years of the constant erosion of sunbake and sea moisture, against the bright lights of sets of these tapas bars, all the while a wild vast Atlantic looming off in the background, one of the most common sights of ship fleets, privateers and buccaneers ever known to history.  We could imagine what it might be like to be a midshipman on any such ancient Galleon of old, paddling into this magnificent shore by moonlight, looking up into the candle-lit tavern and know that the treasures you hold inside the foredeck cabin was safe for the night against the approaching marauders from the north or south or both.