Bilbao: caras de la ciudad

Abstract

This work aims to take a look at the city of Bilbao from its origins until today. The city that was born in the shelter of the mines and the shipyards has passed away and it has yielded to a new multicultural urban space, governed by the service sector, tourism, leisure and a new way of understanding art as a mercantilist product, from which the Guggenheim museum is a good reflection, and it is also the focal point of Alacranes en su tinta, a novel by Juan Bas, often quoted along these pages. However, that “old Bilbao” still survives, thanks to its people and to some of its landscape, specially the “Siete calles” that compose the old downtown. Bilbao symbolises at its best the pretension of the high spheres of power to make compatible tradition and innovation, to the point that they can make an advertising slogan out of it.