Walking in Italy very close to the French border prompts some reflection on the nature of border lands, towns and villages  that are legally and constitutionally part of one country but are physically only a few kilometres away from the border with another country.  How do they relate to their neighbours?  How do they cope with whatever legacy history has thrown at them?

We are here as part of our preparations for walking the Camino de Santiago in the autumn: a burst of hill training, since the Camino will hardly ever involve the climbs we are doing here, but will involve more distance, so the days will be about as long or longer.  Here is a fairly remote part of Italy, two and a half hours from Turin by train and car, in the Valle Maira in Piedmont province.  It`s in the south western Alps, and today`s walk took us not just up to the French border but across it, at the Colle del Maurin, or Col de Maurin, depending on which country you are approaching it from.  The picture shows the stone marking the border, dating from 1857: since this was before Italy was formed as a country, it shows the fleur-de-lys for France and the cross for the Kingdom of Savoy.  

There is evidence here of different relationships between Italy and France.  The two were of course at war with each other from 1939, and one of our walks passed the ruins of a Second World War bunker.  But the nearby village of Saretto tells the story of a different kind of relationship.  In May 1944, the Pacts of Saretto were signed between the Italian Liberation Movement and the French Resistance, committing themselves to work together against fascism, on the basis that “Among the French and Italian peoples, there is no reason for resentment.”  These days, the Italian children learn French in primary school, and we have – thankfully if rather shamefully – been able to communicate with taxi drivers and some of the hotel staff in French rather than in our pidgin Italian.

In most borderlands where we have visited, people seem to get along across the border.  The Swiss have to manage not just multiple external borders, but also internal ones between the three main language groups.  The last two times we were in northern Italy, we were in the Sudtirol, where they still speak German as a first language.  And Judith spotted that one of our earlier walks, in the French Alps, was actually not very far from where we are now.

In Spain, the main border issue – as opposed to the huge internal political issue about Catalan independence – centred on the Basque country, which we will be walking through on the Camino.    The Basque area spans Spain and France: when we stayed in our starting point of St Jean Pied de Port, just the French side of the Pyrenees, in 1988, we saw a reenactment of a traditional Basque wedding.  The case for making the Basque area a country in its own right has been advanced for centuries. It`s a pity that perceptions of this interesting part of the world were shaped for some by the periodic outbursts of Basque terrorism in the `80s and `90s, while not much progress was made by their political wing.  Thankfully the separatist organisation responsible, ETA, ended its armed activity in 2011. 

The “autonomous community” within Spain called the Basque Country, with Bilbao as its capital, is actually not on our route, which goes straight into the province of Navarre.  But that is Basque territory too, so it will be interesting It will be interesting to walk through the area, very briefly in France, and for some days in Spain, and see then how it differs from other parts of the country.

The dynamics of borderlands have been studied by academics and investigated by people with local knowledge and the locus to ask questions: there has of course been plenty of this work in the context of the Irish border post-Brexit.  That`s not my purpose in a blog.  All I will say is that I hope the cooperation and mutual understanding we have seen in the southwestern Alps can be seen more often elsewhere.