These popular wall sports are thought to be descended from a 17th-century game and direct ancestors of tennis, squash, and racket ball.
The rural beauty of France’s Basque Country captivates me, with its untamed coast and rolling green hills dotted with red tile-roofed villages and surrounded by clouds of white sheep. Walking through these towns, I’m always on the lookout for a unique wall, roughly 16m wide and 10m tall. It’s usually pink or pale yellow, and the date it was built is usually emblazoned on the front. It is possible, but not required, for the top of the wall to rise into an arch and be surrounded by a mesh fence.
If I find the wall, I’m probably near the town hall, which is labelled in two languages: “herriko etxe” in Basque and “mairie” in French. And I’m sure there’s a stone church nearby with a reverently maintained cemetery.
This trio of buildings is known as the trinité by locals: the town hall, the church, and that wall, which the Basques call the plaza, or fronton in French. Communities gather here to watch and play a dozen different ball games known as Euskal pilota – Euskal meaning Basque, and pilota referring to the specific type of ball, a latex nut wrapped in yarn and covered in leather.
The games (commonly known as Basque pelota around the world) were developed in these mountains hundreds of years ago and range from hand pilota, in which the ball is thrown and caught with bare hands, to pala, a collection of games played with a wooden paddle or a cord-strung racket. In an age of football idols and video games, it’s a testament to the strength of Basque culture that plazas are still crowded on any given Sunday afternoon with players vying for time, while enthusiastic friends, families, and fans watch from the sidelines.
These wall sports are thought to be direct descendants of jeu de paume, a 17th-century French game, and the direct ancestors of tennis, squash, and racket ball. They are now popular around the world, thanks in large part to Basque entrepreneurs who brought one of the games, cesta punta, to Florida in the 1920s. They renamed it “jai ala,” which means “joyful celebration,” and it sparked an international betting craze.
Cesta punta, like its sister sport grand chistera, is one of the fastest ball games ever recorded. They are played with a chistera, which is a leather glove attached to a long, thin basket with a hook-like curve. The basket is used to catch the pilota, swing it back in a dramatic arch, and then send the ball hurtling against the plaza at incredible speeds. In fact, cesta punta holds a Guinness World Record for the fastest ball.
The best chisteras are still handcrafted in traditional workshops, such as the family-run Atelier Gonzalez in Anglet. Sunbeams pierced a small room littered with wood shavings and cluttered with chisteras in various states of repair when I visited. Peio Gonzalez, the fourth generation of chistera makers in this village, was deftly constructing a frame out of chestnut, while his father, Jean-Louis, stood nearby weaving willow branches into a glove’s basket. Bixente Gonzalez, the family’s fifth-generation artisan, was practising cesta punta for the pro circuit in a plaza.
“The frontons serve as a loc de vie [community centre]. On a Sunday, the entire village descends on Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port or Hasparren “Gonzalez elaborated, naming two nearby villages in the heart of the Pyrenees, near the Spanish border “We consume alcohol. We all laugh.”
Patxi Tambourindeguy, my next stop in the coastal village of Bidart, agreed: “These traditions keep the culture alive.” He and his brother Jon are world champions in jai ala, having competed in Cuba, Acapulco, and Miami. When they are not on the road, they can be found at Ona Pilota, a light-filled atelier they opened six years ago to meet the growing demand for custom-designed chisteras and hand-crafted pilotas.
The Basques are just as proud of their locally sourced cuisine as they are of their unique sports, so plazas are frequently located near a restaurant or bar. In February, while strolling through Bayonne, a popular resort port city on the Basque coast, I followed the sound of a pilota game echoing through the Petit Bayonne quartier and stumbled into a brasserie serving fans and players beside the 300-year-old Trinquet Saint André, one of France’s oldest indoor plazas. Similarly, Jean-Claude Astigarraga’s Restaurant du Trinquet in the small village of Arcangues, 15 kilometres inland, was built with a viewing window, allowing diners to watch a match while savouring traditional specialties like pigeon or acorn-fed pork grilled over an open flame. The owner exclaimed exuberantly from behind the bar, “Do you see what I mean? How fortunate am I to have this every day?”
Visitors interested in learning more about the various games can begin at the Pelota and Xistera Pilotari Ecomuseum in St-Pée-sur-Nivelle, or purchase tickets to professional matches held in Bidart throughout the summer. But the best way to truly understand the power of the pilota is to go to the nearest plaza on your own, or to sign up for lessons from cesta punta champions Patxi and Jon, who teach the fun of this Basque tradition.