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The Fresno Basque Club hosted last weekend the first US Basque festival of the 2015 season, at Rancho Vista del Río. “Everything went very well, I think people really had a great time,” said Manuela Etchechury, dance instructor of the club, to EuskalKultura.com. In fact, there were about a hundred people more than last year.

Fresno, CA. “We were very excited to have the first festival and I guess people were too,” said Etchechury. And even though she labeled the Fresno Basque Club’s festivity as “one of the small ones,” 670 meals were served on Saturday. “I think we had a lot of kids in the past five years and, since the church’s dates for first communion and the festival of the baskos are the same weekend, and none of us were going to change our date, I think that had a positive effect and people celebrated everything the same day,” she quipped.

But not just locals showed up. “I saw friends from Bakersfield, San Francisco, and mostly from the central valley. I didn’t see people from Chino, I know it is a little bit far south, but there were definitely people from other clubs.”

Father Mike Lastiri initiated the day with a Basque Catholic mass at around 10:00 a.m., and the last ones left the ranch no much later than 8:00 p.m. “It is early, but since there are no lights outside, people don’t stay until too late.”

All the members involved

A bunch of members of the club cooked for the visitors, while another group was in charge of the bar−“everybody was doing something,” pointed out Etchechury. The BBQ lamb, a people’s favorite in these events, was served between 1:00 and 3:00 p.m. and, after lunch, the local dancers and the Klika musicians from Bakersfield, performed for about two hours. “39 dancers danced, aged 4 to 50,” highlighted the dantza instructor. “It was wonderful to see some little kids and their parents dancing the same day.”

Jean Flesher Band closed the day playing for the crowd. But, even though La Belle Michelle was supposed to perform too, she could not show up.

Breakfast at Santa Fe

Manuela Etchechury is also the owner of the Santa Fe Basque Restaurant, where many of the Saturday attendees had 'Basque breakfast' the next day. “We started serving food at 9. Morcilla, sausages, patata, pancakes, biscuits and gravy, eggs, cheese… And, of course, red wine,” said she, smiling. By noon, almost everybody left, and now the Fresno-Basques are ready to visit other clubs in California, to keep with the season rolling.