Bilbao: a story of hope in times of crisis

Let’s put this clear to avoid any future misunderstandings: Bilbao is my hometown and I love it. I would probably love it too if it were dull, uninteresting, monotonous, just like I love my overweighed cat or the 10-year-old shabby cardigan I wear at home in winter – but I would never expect you to love any of them, and please do not hesitate to sacrifice me if I ever post an article about such topics -.

The point is that Bilbao is nothing like a seedy piece of cloth from the ‘90s. Quite the opposite; the city has spent the last 20 years reinventing itself, never resigned to the decadence of heavy industry, mining and shipyards. For Basques are pioneers and hard-working people. And we never give up.

Bilbao, the city where you always see the green mountains at the end of every street, is the place where its inhabitants took an “all-or-nothing” decision to invest and build a brand new Guggenheim Museum and thus a new future for the next generations. Again we decided to risk it all and change the urban landscape: docking areas converted into river promenades, new design architectural icons, quality tourism as target. Thanks to the municipal policy of reducing traffic in the city centre, together with the new means of transport such as the subway and the tram, Bilbao turned into a cleaner place. Suddenly the bilbaínos, who without any sign of embarrassment had always considered their town as plainly ugly – for in our concept of prosperity, beauty had never been an essential component -, started looking upwards and discovered the splendid eclectic architecture of El Ensanche. A new conference centre – the Palacio Euskalduna – launched Bilbao as congress destination. International architects gave the city a new shape with their state-of-the-art projects: Arata Isozaki, César Pelli, Norman Foster, Frank Gehry…

Foto: Roberto Calera - Picasa

We live hard times in our country now – hard times everywhere in fact – and it is easy to fall into desperation. But when I look back I realise that I watched my hometown rising from the ashes (literally), and not only watched, but also helped with my 2 cents’ worth. Then I know that we can do it again, as the old song says, “with a little help of my friends”.