Hotel accommodation grows 7.6%

Igor still remembers that remote morning when he put on a pair of skis and "a man from Bilbao" took him to the snow. "We started skiing because a man named Miguel Garay came to Durango to set up a club. What that man did then with the children of my town and other areas of Vizcaya is what I am now trying to transfer to Iraqi Kurdistan," he admits to THE WORLD Igor Urizar, proud of having opened in the village of Penjwin -about 20 kilometers from the border with Iran- the first ski school in Iraq. "When I arrived in 2010, the place reminded me of those outings we used to do when we were little. In the 1980s we didn't have infrastructure either and we used to go up the mountain, where there was snow to step on it one after the other and leave our mark", evokes the Basque monitor.

Walking on land that was previously untrodden is an adventure that is not without risk. Igor understood this in 2009 when, fascinated by the story he had read in a travel guide, he wrapped the blanket around his head and went to a remote village in the mountains of Turkish Kurdistan where snowfall condemns it to isolation for two months at a time. year. The trip was a fiasco. "It didn't work out because of the pressure from the police. One day, shortly after I arrived, they kindly invited me to leave," he confesses.

The setback, however, he opened another door: that of the neighboring autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, "an island -says the skier- in a sea of conflicts". In the winter of 2010, Igor - equipped with a batch of skis - landed in Penjwin, at the foot of some mountains that still keep the terror of the mines; the memory of the Kurds fleeing from Saddam Hussein; and the braying of the donkeys crossing the smuggling.

"At first it seemed like a frivolous thing to them, but when they were invited to Navarra to see how the White Week worked, they began to realize the potential," says the forerunner of Nordic skiing on Iraqi soil - a modality that allows you to move along trails and moderately inclined forest trails without the need for infrastructures. Since then, Igor has achieved a small revolution in the winters of Kurdistan. "Penjwin is becoming known for skiing. We have a building where the skis are stored and where music, English and computer activities are organized. If it snows one afternoon, the boys come, borrow the skis and practice on an esplanade there. right behind. Before, I was the one who had to organize the classes, but now they are the ones knocking on the door," the Biscayan enthusiastically narrates.

The success has allowed the initiative to be developed in the three provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan. And since last season, Syrian children in a nearby refugee camp have also been sliding through the snow in Penjwin. "When there is no skiing, life is quite boring and hard," admits Igor, who usually lives a couple of months a year in the village and still has a lot of ground to tread. "When there is no snow, I spend the day drinking tea and going from house to house. I tell them that the Kurdish culture is in the small towns and that if they go to the city they will lose it. We have to change the 'chip' of the majority of the Kurds. They only go up the mountain to sit, eat, drink and dance".