Once the ‘Mecca of Contraband’ : European Border Town Proud of Its Past

This village of 2,000 people hidden in the mountains smack on the French-Spanish border pays little notice to any authority but its own and prides itself on a past reputation of smuggling--”night work,” as the locals like to call it.

“Here, we don’t pay much attention to where the frontier is,” said Paul Dutournier, deputy mayor and village elder. “It’s very complicated, the frontier. You don’t know when you’re on one side or the other. . . . When I die, I don’t know if I’ll lie here or there.”

Sare was once known as the “mecca of contraband,” he added, and the village today doesn’t hide its role as a way station for Spanish Basque refugees crossing the border illegally from the south.

In fact, the village holds a “smuggler’s competition” every summer, a running contest publicized by a poster of a little man running up a mountainside, chased by a customs agent.

Pocket in the Pyrenees

The portly, robust Dutournier spent 34 of his 76 years as mayor of this French Basque enclave in the western Pyrenees, the eighth member of his family to govern the town.

Sare forms a pocket in the Spanish Basque province of Navarre, with 32 kilometers (20 miles) of shared frontier with Spain.

“There is not a commune in Europe which shares 32 kilometers of its frontier with another country,” Dutournier said. “Here, this is an exceptional situation.”

Sareans dealt with their lot in an exceptional fashion, making smuggling a way of life. Seventy-two customs agents once were stationed here but they were all removed about 20 years ago, replaced by one roving patrol.

‘Night Work’ Is Natural

“I’ve never heard it called smuggling,” said Dutournier. “We called it ‘night work.’ It’s very natural.”

Goods cheaper in Spain were brought across the border on the backs of little Basque ponies called Pottoks, known for their sure-footedness on the mountain.

“We made out well and the customs agents did too. We lived together with reciprocal esteem,” Dutournier said.

“Now, there’s very little of that because life has become expensive in Spain too.”

Tacit accommodation on both sides continues in the form of faceries , traditional accords signed by local mayors allowing their region’s animals to cross the border to graze.

Lush Countryside

“Paris and Madrid have nothing to do with it,” Dutournier said of the French and Spanish governments.

Only occasional stone markers denote the French-Spanish frontier running along the edge of the lush Sare countryside, making the Sare region a natural crossing point for Spanish Basques.

“How do you think they wouldn’t hide out here? It’s natural,” said Dutournier, himself a Basque. He said he housed founding members of the Spanish Basque separatist movement ETA in the 1960s.

Sare now depends on farming, not smuggling, for a living. The rich countryside, dotted with small chapels, fans out from around the main square. It has caves thought to have been inhabited by Cro-Magnon man 40,000 years ago and they are open to visitors.

Village Was Honored

But Sareans have distinguished themselves with grander gestures than smuggling. In 1693, King Louis XIV, in an unusual gesture, gave his coat of arms to Sare for distinguished service in putting down Spanish bandoleros .

For three centuries, Sare was a dominion of Britain, then France, which it joined at the time of the French Revolution.

But according to popular history, Sare was once a republic. An engraved stone on the city hall proclaims it so.

“One speaks often of the Republic of Sare,” said Dr. Jean-Michel Garat, president of the local tourist association. “I don’t know if it ever really was true, but in spirit Sare is a republic.