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Turning Point Page 4
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Jack Reagan sipped a cold beer as he admired the view from his vacation home in the small border town of Hendaye, on the Basque Coast, in the south-west of France. The weather was unusually hot; just over 37°C, one of the highest temperatures ever recorded in a region known for its mild and often wet temperate Atlantic climate. Every year he and his wife spent a couple of pleasurable months there, relaxing by the sea, walking in the foothills of the Pyrenees, enjoying the local gastronomy: piperade, tapas, jamon Iberico, and drinking Rioja and Irouleguy wines.
To the south side of the border lay the País Vasco or Euskual Herri, an autonomous region of Spain. To the French side, the Pays Basque had no political status, to the great chagrin of the few remaining real Basques, other than through its long history and traditions.
In the background a twenty-four hour TV news channel was reporting alarming news from the Lebanon, which, perhaps understandably, seemed unimportant to the tens of thousands of carefree holiday makers sunning themselves on the town’s long sandy beaches. Yet another Middle East crisis had pushed the price of gasoline to new heights; the equivalent of almost eight dollars a gallon at the pump, a figure that would have caused a revolution in the US.
The population of Hendaye, as every summer, had jumped from its normal fifteen thousand to almost eighty thousand with the annual influx of holidaymakers and day-trippers. There was nothing unusual about that. What had changed were property prices. Inexplicably these had gone through the roof, rivalling those of Paris, eight hundred kilometres to the north, and Madrid, five hundred kilometres to the south.
Reagan could not help wondering why property prices in Hendaye, a small, almost insignificant, town tucked away in a relatively quiet corner of France, had suddenly rocketed. Part of the answer perhaps lay in the disappearance of borders within the European Union. Hendaye had become an attractive residential area for a growing number of Spanish families from the prosperous neighbouring towns in and around San Sebastian — said to be the smartest seaside resort in Spain — a little over ten miles to the south.
An increasing number of Spanish families were buying second homes in Hendaye and many others were moving there on a permanent basis. Probably due to the lack of readily available homes on the more densely populated Spanish side of the border. There was also the San Sebastian metro system, with the last station of its northern line situated on the French side of the border, giving Spanish residents the possibility of easily commuting from Hendaye to their work places in and around San Sebastian.
In the space of a decade or so, Hendaye’s Spanish population had risen to almost one third of its total permanent residents, a not unwelcome change for the previously pleasant, but economically waning, seaside town.
It was a situation that inevitably led to unrestrained property development with the kind of infrastructure projects, said to meet the needs of a burgeoning population, including a large and ecologically questionable garbage incinerator just a few kilometres to the south of Hendaye and its Spanish neighbour Irun.
The municipality of Hendaye formed part of what was called the Consortio, a cross border administrative structure made up of three neighbouring municipalities; Irun and Fuentarrabia being the other two with populations of one hundred thousand and ten thousand respectively. Fuentarrabia, an old and picturesque coastal town, stood on the south bank of the Bidassoa River, dominated by its magnificent Cathedral and the Castillo de Carlos V, built to defend Spain against France in the 16th and 17th centuries.
There was an odour of speculation in the air. Everything was up for sale or aggrandisement, from homes to the extension of the San Sebastian Airport’s runway, which if planners had their way would spoil the splendid view from Reagan’s stylish traditional Basque home, built on a hill overlooking the bay, not to mention the effect the arrival of large jets would have on the bay’s tranquillity.
For decades the small airport and its single runway, lying under the shadow of the 547 metre high Jaizkibel — the westernmost summit of the Pyrenean foothills — and a couple of hundred metres from a sandy bank called Ile des Oiseaux by the locals; a transit zone for migratory birds, had been the point of arrival and departure of not more than a dozen daily commercial flights, half of which were relatively silent turboprops. That was until ambitious politicos and businessmen focused their attention on the advantages that could be drawn from extending the runway. Another half a kilometre into the bay would bring more traffic with the arrival of larger jets. The bay’s residents saw it differently: the transformation of a site of extraordinary natural beauty into another polluted regional airline hub.
Even Hendaye’s small park with its century old plane trees, bequeathed in trust by a long defunct owner, was being transformed into yet another concrete play park. On a very much larger scale was the project to cover the one hundred and fifty year old Paris-Madrid railway line that ran through a deep cutting in the town’s centre. A massive pre-stressed concrete platform was planned, more than three hundred metres long by almost one hundred wide. A project more in keeping with a monumental building than the foundations of a small town apartment complex. On completion the development would also include a shopping centre and a parking facility, all conceived on an entirely speculative basis. The architects plans showed a total of three hundred and fifty apartments, increasing the total number of residential units in Hendaye by not far off ten percent.
Elected representatives told voters the changes were needed for growth, for jobs, to encourage development. Reagan asked himself what they would do for an encore once the on-going projects were completed. Would the cycle start all over again? Then again, and again? Who was going to pay for it? Where would it lead to? Were such changes needed? Changes if repeated on a national and international scale would surely influence the course of events in other parts of the world: the struggle for resources, oil, minerals, water, space — with the threat of climate change, and a future where summers with temperatures of 37°C in temperate regions would become commonplace.
London
To the south side of the border lay the País Vasco or Euskual Herri, an autonomous region of Spain. To the French side, the Pays Basque had no political status, to the great chagrin of the few remaining real Basques, other than through its long history and traditions.
In the background a twenty-four hour TV news channel was reporting alarming news from the Lebanon, which, perhaps understandably, seemed unimportant to the tens of thousands of carefree holiday makers sunning themselves on the town’s long sandy beaches. Yet another Middle East crisis had pushed the price of gasoline to new heights; the equivalent of almost eight dollars a gallon at the pump, a figure that would have caused a revolution in the US.
The population of Hendaye, as every summer, had jumped from its normal fifteen thousand to almost eighty thousand with the annual influx of holidaymakers and day-trippers. There was nothing unusual about that. What had changed were property prices. Inexplicably these had gone through the roof, rivalling those of Paris, eight hundred kilometres to the north, and Madrid, five hundred kilometres to the south.
Reagan could not help wondering why property prices in Hendaye, a small, almost insignificant, town tucked away in a relatively quiet corner of France, had suddenly rocketed. Part of the answer perhaps lay in the disappearance of borders within the European Union. Hendaye had become an attractive residential area for a growing number of Spanish families from the prosperous neighbouring towns in and around San Sebastian — said to be the smartest seaside resort in Spain — a little over ten miles to the south.
An increasing number of Spanish families were buying second homes in Hendaye and many others were moving there on a permanent basis. Probably due to the lack of readily available homes on the more densely populated Spanish side of the border. There was also the San Sebastian metro system, with the last station of its northern line situated on the French side of the border, giving Spanish residents the possibility of easily commuting from Hendaye to their work places in and around San Sebastian.
In the space of a decade or so, Hendaye’s Spanish population had risen to almost one third of its total permanent residents, a not unwelcome change for the previously pleasant, but economically waning, seaside town.
It was a situation that inevitably led to unrestrained property development with the kind of infrastructure projects, said to meet the needs of a burgeoning population, including a large and ecologically questionable garbage incinerator just a few kilometres to the south of Hendaye and its Spanish neighbour Irun.
The municipality of Hendaye formed part of what was called the Consortio, a cross border administrative structure made up of three neighbouring municipalities; Irun and Fuentarrabia being the other two with populations of one hundred thousand and ten thousand respectively. Fuentarrabia, an old and picturesque coastal town, stood on the south bank of the Bidassoa River, dominated by its magnificent Cathedral and the Castillo de Carlos V, built to defend Spain against France in the 16th and 17th centuries.
There was an odour of speculation in the air. Everything was up for sale or aggrandisement, from homes to the extension of the San Sebastian Airport’s runway, which if planners had their way would spoil the splendid view from Reagan’s stylish traditional Basque home, built on a hill overlooking the bay, not to mention the effect the arrival of large jets would have on the bay’s tranquillity.
For decades the small airport and its single runway, lying under the shadow of the 547 metre high Jaizkibel — the westernmost summit of the Pyrenean foothills — and a couple of hundred metres from a sandy bank called Ile des Oiseaux by the locals; a transit zone for migratory birds, had been the point of arrival and departure of not more than a dozen daily commercial flights, half of which were relatively silent turboprops. That was until ambitious politicos and businessmen focused their attention on the advantages that could be drawn from extending the runway. Another half a kilometre into the bay would bring more traffic with the arrival of larger jets. The bay’s residents saw it differently: the transformation of a site of extraordinary natural beauty into another polluted regional airline hub.
Even Hendaye’s small park with its century old plane trees, bequeathed in trust by a long defunct owner, was being transformed into yet another concrete play park. On a very much larger scale was the project to cover the one hundred and fifty year old Paris-Madrid railway line that ran through a deep cutting in the town’s centre. A massive pre-stressed concrete platform was planned, more than three hundred metres long by almost one hundred wide. A project more in keeping with a monumental building than the foundations of a small town apartment complex. On completion the development would also include a shopping centre and a parking facility, all conceived on an entirely speculative basis. The architects plans showed a total of three hundred and fifty apartments, increasing the total number of residential units in Hendaye by not far off ten percent.
Elected representatives told voters the changes were needed for growth, for jobs, to encourage development. Reagan asked himself what they would do for an encore once the on-going projects were completed. Would the cycle start all over again? Then again, and again? Who was going to pay for it? Where would it lead to? Were such changes needed? Changes if repeated on a national and international scale would surely influence the course of events in other parts of the world: the struggle for resources, oil, minerals, water, space — with the threat of climate change, and a future where summers with temperatures of 37°C in temperate regions would become commonplace.
London