hurrengoa
a blue called bergara aitor azurki   Colours are subjective. And even more so when you go from one culture to another. Who can guarantee that what I think is red is the same colour for you? Couldn’t what is yellow in one culture just as easily be orange in another? Maybe that’s why very precise colours are given first names. Or isn’t it?

Whatever the reasons may be, you don’t have to go very far to find a Basque town with its own colour: a colour which has it own town, its own country. Bergara blue. As the people of Bergara are expert cloth makers they have built up a powerful cloth industry over the centuries. And because of that jeans blue has also come to be known as Bergara blue. The cloth made there used to be very famous. In 1497 the Catholic Monarchs of Spain approved this town’s cloth makers’ regulations in a document currently housed in the Simancas Archive. But apparently it was somebody from Aragon and two people from Baiona who really put the Bergara cloth industry on the map: in 1846 Jose Julian Blanc, Frois and Silva built the Fábrica de Hilados y Tejidos de Vergara. The cloth made there suddenly became extremely well known, so much so that there is still a company with that name today.

However, the name given to so many generations’ production has been forgotten in just a few years due to changes in society. It seems our society’s going down a different route, it has other interests and enthusiasms. In fact, nowadays the sponge cake from Bergara is more famous than Bergara blue.