A day without a car, this Saturday, October 12, in Ainhoa. An event organized by the Ainhoa Beti collective as part of Klima week, but this special operation was also created to highlight another problem. Each day, the village is crossed by thousands of cars who go to the ventas of Dantxaria. Enough to saturate the main axis of the village. To counter this continuous flow of vehicles, at the entrance to Ainhoa, a large “Dantxaria deviation” sign is displayed and three barriers block access to the village. “Daily, there are 6,000 to 9,000 vehicles that pass through this road. We therefore wanted to remove the majority of traffic by using the existing diversion to pacify the city center,” explains Claudine Marticorena of the association Ainhoa Beti at the origin of this dam.
Members of the association still let locals and motorists who only want to visit Ainhoa passbut when the word “Dantxaria” is mentioned, they offer an alternative route which extends the journey by only four kilometers to get to Spain. A good thing for many motorists like Fanny who comes from Gironde. She was going to Dantxaria to look for tobacco. “I was going to take this route, because it is the one suggested to me by my GPS. They explained to me why they are blocking the road and I completely understand their action. In any case, if we go to Spain to do our shopping means we have time, so I’m going to take the other route.”
Adrien Michaud
A pacified village, the story of a day
With this filtering dam, silence reigns in the village. The birds are chirping and a background of Basque music fills the air. A godsend for Joana, her house is located on the main road of the village. “Normally, the ambient noise is the car engines and it’s horrible, because there are a lot of people passing through all day long, there are honking horns, there are traffic jams. There, it’s calm, we don’t ‘hear nothing more, a day like that feels good, it’s really appreciable’, says the young mother. A speech shared by many Ainhoars like Mohand, who has lived here for two years. “My son will be able to ride his bike safely in the street today”, he depicts.
Even the traders who have not seen many people all day with this action believe that the city should return to pedestrians more often.“If you look all the most beautiful villages in France, they are all pedestrianized now. So after a while, you have to think. We are the diehards who never manage to do something.” relates Xavier Isabal. His family has lived in Ainhoa for three generations, he also lives there and he works in a village bistro. “It has become unbearable, if you let someone pass at a pedestrian crossing, the people behind get out of the cars to insult you, and it’s recurring. Strangely, these are always people who are not going to stay in the village, who just cross to go to the other side. So, we have to try something because this traffic is still quite terrible, we have a beautiful road which leads royally to Spain and we are a bit forgotten. It is certain that with this action, we will not make a lot of turnover, but hey, at some point, you have to put a tissue to your ego and get things done“, concludes the restaurateur.
Adrien Michaud
