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The vicious slap of a leather ball on a stone wall is the ubiquitous soundtrack to Saturday afternoon in any Basque or Navarran village. It was a sound that once echoed around the world as the driving force for a multi-million dollar gambling industry.

The golden years of international Jai Alai began in the 1920s when frontons (stadiums) sprang up from Miami to Macao, Shanghai to Havana, Australia to Argentina. Hemingway was a regular at the Havana stadium, Joe di Maggio sprained his throwing arm in Florida and more than a couple of Basque players risked serious injury in Ava Gardner’s boudoir.

Though the spectacular game with the curved basket became known internationally as Jai Alai (literally ‘Merry Fiesta’ in Basque) there are actually fourteen very different variations of the sport. The list of the traditional tools that have been used to play (joko garbi, bote luzua, gaunte laxoa) is as full of mysterious Basque consonants as is the list of names in the sport’s hall-of-fame (Elejabarrieta, Zubeldia, Urretavizcaya). There was a time when Ormaetxea and Zaldunbide were household names in Manila and Amuchastegui was the gambler’s blue-eyed boy in Florida. The player-promoter José María Aranzibia, who oversaw the construction of luxurious stadiums in Jakarta, Philippines and Macao – and had several promising meetings on the subject with the Shah of Iran! – saw the Jai Alai player as ‘the artist who was able to wave the Basque flag throughout the world.’

Cesta Punta (literally ‘pointed basket’) was invented about 150 years ago when a kid known as Gaintxiki passed into history by the simple device of stealing the long basket that his grandmother kept fruit in. The basket had immediate appeal; it was cheaper than the leather glove that was in vogue at the time and it was able to deliver a devastating burst of speed to the ball. After years of refinement the mauser, as it became known, was able to fire the ball at almost 190mph, making Cesta Punta the fastest ballgame in the world. Shrink-wrapped in layers of goatskin the balls are harder than a golf-ball and two teams armed with mausers could fight out an athletic battle that was guaranteed to have appeal even for the most uninformed of spectators.

But it was gambling revenue, even more than the spectacle, which brought Jai Alai to the notice of the world. In Spain Pelota Vasca (Basque Ball) and gambling had always been inseparable; while the current crop of village athletes thrashed it out against the church wall, an older group nearby would be yelling and groaning, tapping their wine-reddened cheeks or the blue veins of their wrists to signal whether their money was riding on the red or the blue team.

“Betting has always been an integral part of the sport,” explained Jon Oyarzun, director of the Navarran Federation of Pelota Vasca, “- last weekend, in a normal club match here in Pamplona, one bettor lost €18,000.”

Navarra hosted the 2002 Pelota World Championships and the three-tier Labrit Fronton stadium, with its weekly-televised matches, is a far cry from the village plazas where most of the players honed their skills. While two teams of pelotaris smash a leather-clad ‘billiard ball’ up the court, teams of red-blazered touts post betting slips into slotted tennis balls to throw them to punters in the stands. The betting is pari-mutuel; gamblers bet against each other while the touts mediate, earning a 3% cut for themselves and 13% for the house.

Some purists argue that Cesta Punta was never deserving of the worldwide fame that it attracted. It is fast, flashy and easily appreciated, they say, but it does not have the ‘honesty’ of the Remonte version in which the ball is hit with a basket, rather than caught and re-thrown. Nor does it have the simplicity of Pelota a Mano where the ball is struck with the palm of the hand. Some aficionados suggest that this is the manliest version by virtue of the added pain-factor; by the time each player has hit the ball up to 1,000 times along the length of a 36-metre court it begins to feel uncomfortably like a dum-dum bullet.

These days a minimal amount of padding, known as tacos, is allowed on the palm of the hand to prevent the serious disabilities that veteran players suffered from in the old days. Yet Pelota a Mano still has many of the proud attributes of an initiation to manhood for young players. “In villages where the bare hand is not a traditional version of the sport it is difficult to introduce it to the kids,” Oyarzun points out, “they tend to want to escape when it hurts.”

Where junior recruits are concerned the cost of Cesta Punta can be prohibitive – a competitive player can get through several £400 baskets in a season and will be lucky if a £20 pelota survives two high-speed games. But club funding and the introduction of cheaper plastic cestas (for training) are helping to bring the world’s fastest ballgame back within reach of the village kids. In an area that is strongly aware of its cultural identity, Jai Alai is increasing in popularity for youngsters who before were more likely to commandeer the village fronton for a game of football.

Every village has its dedicated adherents who claim that playing with the bare hand is el alma de la pelota – the soul of the sport – others prefer the more spectacular derivation that became known internationally as the Jai Alai.

As a veteran of Pelota a Mano and manager of a regional Cesta Punta club, Ramón Martinez Asensio is able to appreciate all the variations of Jai Alai and he looks back with apparent fondness on the good old days when he used to counteract the swelling by treading on his knuckles between games. “You try not to show pain when you’re on the court,” he says, “if you show weakness in one hand, that’s surely where your opponents will try to place the pelota.”

With his beret clamped under his arm and a cigar and a glass of patxaran liquor lodged in his thick fingers, Asensio seems to be the archetypical Jai Alai spectator. Yet he considers it a shame that gambling and sport have always been so inseparable in the ‘Merry Fiesta.’ “After more than forty years in the sport, I’ve never yet bet on a game,” he says proudly.

Fact file
Season: You stand a good chance of catching one or other of the fourteen versions of Pelota Vasca at any time of the year but, for obvious reasons in ‘green Spain,’ it is played most frequently in the summer. The large indoor stadiums hold year-round tournaments.

Where to watch: The cancha, or court, for Cesta Punta is generally 53m long and a front back and sidewalls are used. For other versions the court is shorter (i.e. 36m for Pelota a Mano) with only front and sidewalls in play. In the villages canchas come in every size – however the walls of the church or the town hall are positioned.

Cesta Punta – you are unlikely to see the world famous basket-version in smaller villages though the lovely fronton at Gernika still holds competitions, as does Markina. You will see cesta punta (along with most other versions) in the celebrated Basque frontons in San Sebastian, Bilbao and Vitoria.

Pelota a Mano – the bare hand version can be seen in countless villages all over Navarra and the Basque country (including the unforgettable harbour-side church-wall set-up at Mundaka) and is played professionally at big venues like San Sebastian, Pamplona and Vitoria.

Paleta - played with a variety of wooden ‘paddles,’ this is a common version in the villages but more famous venues are Bermeo and Bilbao.

Remonte – one of the last remaining places to catch this typically Navarran version of cesta punta is at Huarte, near Pamplona.

Trinquete - one of the most unusual fronton layouts, where all four walls are used…with an overhanging roof coming out of one sidewall (Pamplona tennis club has one of the few remaining examples).

Websites: Federación Española de Pelota: www.federaciondepelota.com
Federación de Pelota Vasca de Euskadi: www.lapelotavasca.com
Federación Internacional de Pelota Vasca: www.fipv.com

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