Surrounded by green pastures and small valleys, Saint-Etienne-de-Baïgorry is a small village through which the Nive des Aldudes runs. It is split up into several distinct districts, each with its own nobleman's house. One of these, Etxauz castle, was home to the viscounts of Baïgorry, lords of the valley in the XIVth century.

The green vales around Saint-Etienne-de-Baïgorry

Baïgorry or Aldudes valley

	Isolated among the Spanish valleys, Aldudes is fighting against rural depopulation. The Aldudes valley's farming activities are on the rise, with the recent boom in Basque pig breeding -the pigs are left free to roam but fed on chestnuts and acorns, producing delicious ham- and the making of sheep cheese. The valley's other resource swims in the Nive fish rearing parks: 1,600 tonnes of rainbow trout are produced locally every year. After the village of Aldudes, you cross the Spanish border to enter Quint, an area with a rather special status…

Quint country

		Quint country ("Kintoa" in Basque) is a rather special area of land: it officially belongs to Spain, but it is mostly exploited and inhabited by French farmers. Electricity only reached this remote area in 1979 and the telephone in 1983! Since the Bayonne treaty in 1856, France rents this land from Spain for about 100,000 F (around 15,200 euros). The productive pastures are thus available to farmers from the Baïgorry valley. Every year at Urepel the animals officially allowed to go and graze in Quint are marked.

2,500 hectares of Spanish land worked by about ten French farmers

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