I sadly don’t have anything personal to add on the specific topic of Basque cuisine, but I want to encourage any Indo-European language speaker who even marginally enjoys language to read up on the situation of Basque language (Euskara). It is a language isolate, and the only extant language in mainland Europe that does not descend from Proto-Indo-European. The Basque language survived in the sliver of land at the fringes of the Roman and Moorish conquests.
Not tapas, actually, but "Pintxos" (pronounced 'peen-chohs'). These are paid, they don't come for free with every beverage.
On being against the govt, technically the Basque and Navarrese "Fueros" (some kind of agreement between the people and the King) made them mostly self-managed in Spain/Iberia. There even used to be locally minted coins, customs and exeption from doing the military service.
And, on txokos, been there. They are often half-familiar/half-your-engraved-by-fire-friend-group-from-Elementary School times, forever and ever, amen.
On being against the govt, technically the Basque and Navarrese "Fueros" (some kind of agreement between the people and the King) made them mostly self-managed in Spain/Iberia. There even used to be locally minted coins, customs and exeption from doing the military service.
And, on txokos, been there. They are often half-familiar/half-your-engraved-by-fire-friend-group-from-Elementary School times, forever and ever, amen.