Hi Hans,
I'm from Madrid, but most of my family (including parents) and friends are from Vizcaya and I spent at least a month a year there, so I can tell you something about the Vizcaya landscape.
Vizcaya (as all the Basque Country) is a wet country. Even in August rains almost every week, so there are green prairies and woods. It's a hilliness country too, plenty of mountains. The villages in the 30's are small and usually, even today, you can find many "caserios". The "caserio" is an isolated house or a small amount of houses where a family lives, surrounding of crops and pastures, not far from the nucleus of the village, generally the church an a few houses and shops.
There was big pieces of land dedicated to pasture, surrounded with stone walls, because the cattle was a very common way of life on that days. The crops are small (dedicated to the family subsistence), with corn, lettuce, cabbage and other vegetables in it. There are no wheat, barley and other cereal fields as in Castilla.
There are many woods (a richness of Vizcaya, even today) mainly of oaks, beechs and chestnut trees.
The rivers are narrow but there aren't many fords because the shores are steep and the flow is quick.
Almost all the roads in the 30's are dirt roads, normally with mud.
And well ... hope it helps!
[ May 07, 2003, 01:29 PM: Message edited by: Leta ]