Its food cultures have developed across different political and linguistic settings — Euskara or Basque, Spanish and French  —while remaining deeply connected to wider movements of people, goods and knowledge. Maritime trade and overseas commerce, diaspora and exile, industrial migration and more recent international mobilities all complicate any simple division between local and foreign, tradition and change.

Food Hack Lab, Sobremesa’s Basque consortium partner, works mainly between Donostia / San Sebastián and the rural and peri-urban communities of Gipuzkoa. Donostia’s international gastronomic reputation and long relationship with tourism make it a particularly productive place for questioning how food becomes heritage, identity and territorial brand — and whose labour, knowledge and everyday practices remain outside that story. Through its collaboration with Tabakalera and its open, maker-oriented community, FHL approaches this context through practice-based inquiry, experimentation and public participation. The Food Hack Lab residency connects local networks, cultural infrastructures and citizens, using food as memory, interface and commons through which identities, memories and forms of belonging can be explored, documented and shared.