In the Basque Country ordinary people played ball for fun: it was an entertainment and a way of cementing relationships with neighbouring towns and villages. There was no distinction according to social status, and anyone could play against anyone. Townspeople and villagers took part and municipal authorities took care of the upkeep of playing areas and ensured that they were available for public use. Ball courts were usually located in streets and public squares close to the town hall or village church, in areas where people gathered to enjoy themselves on feast days. The game of ball did not disappear with the passage of time, but it changed its form and a wall on the left side of the court was added. Eventually it became a typical feature of Basque culture, particularly with the emergence of the form of the game known as blé.
The earliest accounts of ball games are concerned with the long-court game, which was played on the streets of towns and villages. The size of the playing area depended solely on the size of the street or square used. The serving block stood at one end of the street, and the edge of the playing area was marked by the walls of the surrounding buildings, if any. The ball was always served bare-handed, but the rest of the game might be played with bare hands, gauntlets or bats.
Playing areas began to be standardised in the late 18th century, and at about the same time the game of rebote (literally “rebound”) appeared. Construction drawings and the accompanying specifications for work reveal that for the long-court game the playing area was around 100 m in length from the serving block to the return line. The rebote court was smaller, and featured a wall or frontón in the return area in front of which there was a paved area. In this version of the game the serving block was located in the centre of the court, opposite the frontón.
Apart from the paved area, the rest of the floor was made of compacted earth. The line that divided the paved area from the rest was known as the escas de rebote or rebound line. The paved area was sometimes also delimited by side walls, and was thus clearly differentiated from the rest of the playing area.
Records of repair work on ball courts by municipal authorities reveal that particular attention was paid to the paved area, which was used not just for rebote but also for a newer form of the game known as blé, which some villages initially prohibited (Gorosabal writes that it was considered as fit only for children) but which became increasingly popular. The accounts of refurbishment and modification work on these courts give us a clue as to how the game evolved: the right-hand wall of the rebote court was eliminated, the left-hand wall was lengthened and the paved area was extended along the left-hand wall. The earliest evidence of walled ball courts dates from 1509 in Bilbao, but it was not until the rise in popularity of blé that the wall became the focal point of play.
The lines or "cords" that divided up the playing area (the perimeter line and the line that originally marked the edge of the paved area) were maintained, as were the vertical lines used in the rebote game to enable players to calculate distances (on modern pelota courts these lines are known as cuadros or "squares"). There was a serving line and a foul serve line, and when the ball was served it had to hit the frontón or front wall above a line marked by a metal strip fitted 1.18 m above floor level. The serving line may be at cuadro 3 or 4, depending on whether the game is played bare-handed or with bats, gauntlets, cesta (basket) or chistera (scoop), and the foul serve line is at cuadro 7.
This new type of court was small enough to be accommodated in any town or village. The length of the court varied from one town to another, ranging from the 32 m of the Vista Alegre court in Azpeitia in 1885 to the 64 m of the Euskalduna court in Bilbao in 1895, but in all cases the front and left walls were 11 m high (the front 11 m high by 11 m wide). The frontón always built of ashlar blocks, and it took great skill to build this wall and lay the paving slabs: only the highest quality materials were used, and the blocks and slabs had to be cut to precise measurements and laid in exactly the right way.
The use of the frontón or front wall is the main innovation introduced by the Basques into the age-old tradition of ball games. Whether played bare-handed or with bats, gauntlets (laxoa), scoops (chistera) or baskets (cesta), the game of pelota is the invention of a society that is creative while at the same time respecting past knowledge. The modern game still shows traces of the old long-court and rebote forms, but it also has new, defining features such as the specific equipment used, the type of ball used in each case and above all the frontón, which is such a distinctive feature that the word has come to be used as the name of the entire court.
Text: Dr. Amaia Basterretxea
Sources: “The basque game of pelota / Euskaldunen pilota jokoa”
Euskal Museoa. Bilbao. Museo Vasco, 2009
