Getaria is a small but important fishing village on the Basque coast of northern Spain. Once famous as a whaling port, it also boasts two famous sons: Juan Sebastian Elcano, honoured as the first man to sail around the world, and Cristobal Balenciaga, the 20th century's most celebrated couturier. I took a trip there recently from San Sebastian in the hope of visiting a new museum dedicated to the great designer.
More than three decades after his death, the name Balenciaga still resonates in the world of international fashion, thanks to the Belgian designer Nicholas Ghesquiere, who has revived its flagging fortunes. Invitations to his catwalk shows are now the most sought-after in Paris.
Notoriously reclusive and obsessively private, Cristobal Balenciaga (l895-1972) never gave interviews, but in recent years he has become the subject of intense scrutiny thanks to major retrospectives of his work. A book on the designer by Lesley Ellis Miller, just reissued by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to coincide with its Golden Age of Couture exhibition next month, celebrates his achievements.
I saw some of his work at the Louvre last year and was captivated by the beauty and technical brilliance of his clothes. His style was characterised by adaptations of Spanish native and historical costumes, combined with French couture, British tailoring and elements of ecclesiastical grandeur. He created the sack dress, the tunic and many other shapes that were widely copied. His sense of colour was unmatched. Fashionable women flocked to his salon and both Chanel and Dior acknowledged him as master.
Coming into Getaria, I stopped for directions in the town only to find myself, by extraordinary chance, right outside the Cristobal Balenciaga Foundation office, which looked empty and abandoned. Later I discovered that, contrary to my 2007 Eyewitness Travel Guide and various newspaper reports, the museum was not yet open, nor even built.
Juan Sebastian Elcano, who completed his three-year voyage circumnavigating the globe in 1522, taking over the expedition after the death of Magellan, is commemorated by a monument erected in 1924 and in a small shop display on the town's narrow main street. But the only sign of Balenciaga I was to see was an enamelled plaque on a tuna boat bearing the name of a local shipyard of that name.
Getaria must have been a beautiful place to grow up in. It is a close-knit seafaring community with lucrative tuna and anchovy fishing, a stylish yachting port, sandy beaches and elegant buildings. The 14th-century Church of San Salvador where Balenciaga, a devout Catholic, must have worshipped, is a national monument which features a most unusual raked floor, a black-cloaked Madonna and a menorah (eight-branched candelabra). The town is also associated with the production of txakoli (chakoli) the delicious fresh and fruity white wine that is poured from a height and is the perfect accompaniment to fish. Adjoining the port is the pretty, wooded Mouse Island.
Balenciaga was the son of a fisherman and one-time mayor of Getaria, who died when the boy was 11 years old. His mother supported the family of three as a seamstress, often catering for visiting families on holiday in the area. The young Cristobal, who was to preserve his mother's sewing-machine for the rest of his life, began his training as a tailor at the age of 12.
One of his first significant patrons was the Marquesa de Casa Torres, whose summer residence was the Aldamar Palace, an undistinguished l9th-century red-brick building on a hill overlooking the town. The mother of Fabiola, the future queen of Belgium, was born in the house, where Balenciaga began his career as a fashion designer. It is here that the museum is being constructed and I walked up to see it, skirting the building rubble and pre-fab site offices surrounding the place. Flanked by two vast glass extensions, it will be enormous when finished and the largest dedicated to one designer. It certainly dwarfs Dior's house at Granville in Normandy.
Funded by a Spanish government grant of $3.2 million in 2000, the project has received support from the Basque region, the royal family and by major patrons such as the designers Hubert de Givenchy and Paco Rabanne, the opera star Placido Domingo and the dowager Queen Fabiola of Belgium. The cost of finishing the building, however, is now estimated at around €l7.4 million. Locals shrugged their shoulders when asked about it, showing little interest.
When completed, the museum will contain some 850 garments along with jewellery, drawings, patterns, photographs and other articles relating to the designer. According to the foundation, its function will be to "gather, conserve, promote and develop the artistic legacy of Cristobal Balenciaga in the context of fashion history, design and other artistic creation". Other ambitious objectives will include the construction of an international design centre, an archive and conference centre.
It all justifies a return trip, but in the meantime, Balenciaga museum or not, Getaria and adjoining seaside resorts such as Zumaia and Zarautz and the famous surfing beach of Mundaka are all within striking distance of Bilbao and San Sebastian and are enjoyable places to visit. And of course, there is Guernica in the Mundaka valley, victim of Hitler's savage saturation bombing in l937, and immortalised in a searing painting by Picasso.