Gernika was the first September 11th – Dave Boling

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Dave Boling. Photo: Igor Lansorena (EiTB)

Once upon a time, there was a graceful Basque-American girl in the University of Idaho. She walked past me, I saw her and I told her to stop: hey, you have got the eyes of a gypsy fortune-teller! “I am not a gypsy, I am Basque” she said. And that¿s where it all began.

These are not the first words of “Guernica”, Dave Boling’s first work of fiction, but they are surely the explanation of how he got to know about the Basque Country, its people and traditions.

Speaking outside the back of a Basque sheep wagon outside the Basque block on Friday evening, Dave Boling recounted how he firs met his wife, a Basque-American student, which began his inspiration for writing “Guernica”.

I was from Chicago and I had never heard the word “Basque” before. And a week later I was at a Basque gathering in Boise eating chorizo and attempting to dance Basque jotas, Boling said talking about his first experience with Basque traditions.

The US writer, who works as a sports columnist at the Tacoma News Tribune, went on to tell how through the years he came to fall in love with the Basque culture.

“Why aren¿t there many contemporary fiction books with Basques as characters?” He wondered one day. It was then that he decided that he had to write about the Basques.

Gernika-New York connection

Another important reason for Boling to choose Gernika was the connection between the bombing of Gernika and the Sept-11 attacks in New York.

Gernika was somehow the first Sept-11, he argued, and we have learned very little since then. Further motivation for writing a book on the bombing was that the people of the United States thought only about Picasso when they heard about “Guernica”, but did not really understand what the picture represented.

The book, which was recently published in the United States, is being translated into Spanish, Italian and German, and sold in many European countries. The book tour includes visits to the Basque Country and Spain in the week of September 22nd.