Bilbao and its Basque culture

Basque Culture of Bilbao and the Regeneration of the Villa of Bilbao in Contemporary Times

The objective of this work is to report on Bilbao and its history and culture, with an emphasis on Basque influences.

The work of Robert Lawrence Trask states that the Basque-speaking region extends from just outside the cathedral city of Bayonne (Basque Baiona) in the north to the outskirts of the huge industrial port of Bilbao (Basque Bilbo) in the west; these two cities and the ancient city of Pamplona (Basque Irunea) all lie just outside the territory." (1997) Trask relates that the early Middle Ages "were a time of urbanization and economic growth in the Basque Country." (1997) This is stated to be, in part, due to an influence by the French as "French pilgrims were flocking to the newly important shrine of Santiae de Compostela" and "the Navarrese kings actively encouraged French settlers to move in and found cities, few of which yet existed in the Basque mountains.

The most important consequence of the development was the found of San Sebastian in 1180 and Bilbao in 1300, these two cities and Bayonne were the only important Basque ports, and they were destined to play a major role in Basque history later, especially Bilbao." (Trask, 1997) During the twelfth century, many towns were founded in the Basque territories and while "that information is none too plentiful," it is still possible to visualize the "mixed economy: pastoralism was perhaps the backbone, but small-scale agricultural was practiced wherever the terrain would allow it, and there was considerable fishing along the coast. Basque ships from Bayonne, San Sebastian, and Bilbao traded all over western and northern Europe. This is stated to have substantially affected "the economy of the formerly removed and backward coastal region." (Trask, 1997) From approximately the time Bilbao was founded there is plenty of evidence of "well-developed local democracy in the Basque provinces..." (Trask, 1997) the French Basques were "generally content with English rule, from which they were deriving considerable commercial benefit..." (Trask, 1997) in 1883, Bilbao's prominent businessmen founded the University of Deusto.

I. BASQUE INDUSTRIALIZATION

The work of William Douglass and Joseba Zulaika entitled: "Basque Anthropological Culture Perspectives" relates that Basque Industrialization is "extricably tied to Bilbao. Throughout history, it has been the cutting edge of the Basque economy." (Douglass and Zulaika, nd) This work states that the colorful figures in Bilbao includes:."..fisherman, mariners, shipbuilders, merchants colonial adventurers, and smugglers..." (Douglass and Zulaika, nd)

The lives of these individuals "were dependent on the Catabrian Sea." (Douglass and Zulaika, nd) Passing through the city is the Neroioi (Nervion) River, and as such "...was the grand avenue to the Atlantic Ocean" and was the "facilitator and symbol of Bilbao's maritime traffic and openness to the word." (Douglass and Zulaika, nd) the city of Bilbao also has a seaport that is important due to its "vast deposits of mineral wealth" and was noted by Pliny "...the Roman chronicler that "Canabria's 'mountain of iron' "situated adjacent to what would become Bilbao a thousand years later." (Douglass and Zulaika, nd)

II. FROM MEDIEVAL to COMMERCIAL VILLA

Bilbao was founded in 1300 by Don Diego Lopez de Haro and this charter "guaranteed the nascent town exclusive jurisdiction over the Nerboioi's trade." (Douglass and Zulaika, nd) Exports in great volume including Castilian wood, Basque iron implemented combined with imported European goods "made the Bilbao-Flanders run Western Europe's most important trade route." (Douglass and Zulaika, nd) Zulaika states in the work entitled: "Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa: Museums, Architecture and City Renewal" that Bilbao, following its history as a medieval villa became a 'commercial villa' after the establishment of its consulate in 1511 "then, in the second half of the last century, it grew into the proud regional industrial city..." (2003)

Beginning in the 1990s the "post industrial Bilbao" has been "reborn from the ashes of its industrial ruins." (Zulaika,

Zulaika writes that the Spanish philosopher and writer Miguel de Unamuno wrote "of the Nervion River which anchors his native Bilbao" as follows:

You are, Nervioun, the history of the Villa,

You her past and her future, you are Memory always turning into hope

And on your firm riverbed fleeing flow." (Zulaika, 2003)

III. BILBAO'S FOUNDATIONAL CHARTER

Bilbao's foundational charter "granted the medieval villa exclusive jurisdictional rights to Nervious trade. The river has supplied Bilbao's history, wealth and central metaphor." (Zulaika, 2003) Bilbao made the provision of the "natural ports for exports and a wide window on the world." (Zulaika, 2003) During a period of 150 years of industrial boom, the banks of the Nervion River "became the home of Spain's largest iron and steel industries." (Zulaika, 2003) All that remains on this period according to Zulaika is "a wasteland of industrial ruins." (Zulaika, 2003) in fact, the many years of heavy industry in the city of Bilbao had turned the Nervion River "into a black meandering sewer upon which the Bilbainos had learned to turn their backs." (Zulaika, 2003) a bridge was erected over the Nervion River "long before the villa was founded in 1300." (Zulaika, 2003)

IV. CONSTRUCTION of SAN ANTON BRIDGE

Zulaika states of the construction of the San Anton Bridge that it was:

Promethean attempt to arch worlds apart: land and shore, river and sea, interior and exterior, past and future, left and right. It is this tradition of bridging the seemingly impossible - suspension bridges floating in the air and drawbridges opening up their mandibles to the sky in a big yawn as the cargo files surreptitiously by, these tenuous and temporary structural rites of passage, yet complicated and enduring works of arrogant engineering that sustained Bilbao's self-invented image of a synthesis of warring elements, a historical linkage between the seemingly irreconcilable worlds of the villa and its hinterland, the rural and urban economics, aristocratic and proletarian lives, and Basque and European interests." (Zulaika, 2003)

Bilbao is situated in the Spanish province of Vizcaya and is the "birthplace of both Basque nationalism and Spanish socialism." (Zulaika, 2003) While the Basques are widely pictures as shepherds and the Basques "have had their share of pastoral experiences" at the same time the "main industrial and urban Basque center shatters the basis for such a collective representation." (Zulaika, 2003)

Zulaika notes that "all traditions are selective" and "in such traditions the transition from the rural to the industrial" is viewed as a demotion of sorts. The mining tradition of Basque precedes the Villa itself. Zulaika states that the historical perspective necessary to understand the role of Bilbao is provided by Wolf (1982) who relates that beginning in the fifteenth century forward: "European soldiers and sailors, merchants in the service of 'God and profit' provided wide-ranging military and naval support while furnishing commodities to overseas suppliers in exchange for goods to be sold as commodities at home." (Zulaika, 2003) Resulting was a commercial network being created on a global scale. (paraphrased)

V. HARBOR: KEY PART of INFRASTRUCTURE

The harbor in Bilbao was the "key part of the infrastructure and was renovated and finance by private and public funds." (Zulaika, 2003) in the 1870s, railroads were constructed that connected three mines with the harbors. Zulaika relates that Max Weber, at the turn of the century, wrote of Bilbao as follows:

The panorama of the mountains...rising above the sea and the Nervious valley, smoking with a hundred chimneys, forms a spectacle that is so stunning as to become unforgettable." (Zulaika, 2003)

Bilbao was tenth in rank in shipping tonnage in 1856 among Spanish port commercial shipping and "by the mid-1860s it was second only to Barcelona." (Zulaika, 2003) This climb to productivity of Bilbao was not easy and included setbacks relating to iron and wool decline in exports in the first part of the century combined with the First Carlist War of succession to the Spanish throne occurring in the 1830s. When the more advanced factories were established by Andalucia the right to import duty-free products was lost by Bilbao and it was "fully integrated into the Spanish market." (Zulaika, 2003)

VI. INTEGRATION OPENED NEW TRADE OPPORTUNITIES in BILBAO

This integration is said to have "opened new trade opportunities with the Spanish colonies, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines..." resulting in the growth of imports in the decades of the 1840s, 50s, and 60s with Great Britain in the trade of textiles, machinery, drugs and chemical products and with France in silk and textiles. Trade opened up with Norway in the trade of codfish, which accounted for approximately 75% of all imports. Exported from Bilbao were grain and flour, which equaled approximately 72% of the exports between 1858 and 1866 and the shipyards of Bilbao "enjoyed great prosperity during the 1850s and 1860s." (Zulaika, 2003) Total shipping tonnage climbed to 68,200 in 1858 as compared to 30,000 in 1847. Also growing in Bilbao was banking and insurance.

VII. The DEMISE of BILBAO'S ENVIRONMENT and BEAUTY

Zulaika writes that the industrialization process, which was global in nature "deeply transformed Spain and formed new urban planning aimed at controlling the new demographic growth." (2003) During the 1850s Bilbao was drastically changed by rapid industrialization and by the 1860s planned was a new city in which the former method of building houses without a design for the streets was changed and "the new area of planned prosperity was more orderly." (Zulaika, 2003) Zulaika states that the:

central economic ideology was utilitarian laissez-faire - industry should be self-regulated and government reduced to a minimum. The maximum good would come through the unregulated, self-aggrandizing effort of every individual. With the pecuniary reward the only measure of social value, and with profit the only controlling agent, gross social inequalities took root." (Zulaika,2003)

It is related by Zulaika, that these "techniques of agglomeration" stretched across all sectors of life at work including the English factor waterpower system to the steam engine of Watts and the transportation system of the railroad with Bilbao and other port cities playing a role that was crucial "in the transformations." (Zulaika, 2003) Bilbao became an extension of the economic system of the British with growing populations in the areas of mining as well as along the railroad lines, which were newly built. Growth and congestion was stimulated by the great industrial centers with the two primary elements of the "new urban complex" being the factory and the slum.

According to Zulaika, the nucleus of the "urban organism..." was the factory and everything else was subordinate. The factory laid claim to the sites that were best placed including Bilbao's left bank and waterfronts, rivers and canals were "offered up to industry which used them as convenient dumping grounds, turning many of them into open sewers." (Zulaika,2003) it is stated that anyone who dared to complain about the noise or the dirt was merely labeled as a pansies "and Bilbao became the quintessential 'tough city'." (Zulaika, 2003) Zulaika relates that the novel of Blasco Ibanez entitled:

El intruso" is reflective of the primary difficulties between the cultures that are traditional and those that are modernist as well as between religion and science and between nationalism and socialism in the first part of the twentieth century. In fact, these tensions are important to understand the changes in the traditional Basque society as they became faced with the "...working class culture, industrialization, capitalism and irreligiosity." (2003

VIII. RELIGION and the BASQUE CULTURE

Zulaika sates that Ibanez "portrays the pernicious effects of religion on Bilbao's life, exemplified by the intrusion of priests into the household of wealthy businessmen by playing on the spiritual cravings of their wives." (2003) the truth is that in view of the traditional work ethic of the Basque, "business and piety complement each other." (Zulaika, 2003) Many religious fraternities which are stated to date back "to the sixteenth century" stand as a monument to the 'religious conviction of Basque entrepreneurs." (Zulaika, 2003)

The business elite in Bilbao in the nineteenth century were also characterized by the selfsame combined piety and industriousness. This is evidenced by mines being named after saints and private chapels being situate in the homes of private businessmen. Moreover, the children of these individuals often became priests and nuns and Rafaela Ybarra, a nun from the Ybarra family, a very wealthy family "was beatified." (2003) Furthermore, often large merchants stated in their will that they desired to be buried "wearing the habit of religious orders." (Zulaika, 2003)

IX. CONSUMPTION PATTERNS and EXPENDITURES of the BASQUE

Zulaika states that in order to understand the cultural values of the Basque business elite one must view their consumption patterns. Specifically stated is that a study "of twenty-one cases shows that the spending on 'furniture, jewelry, and clothing' accounted for only 1.2% of their total expenditures. Bilbao business elites lived rather modestly compared with the rich Madrid financiers." (2003) There was only one theatre in Bilbao and the theater was considered by the church to be "morally ambiguous." (Zulaika, 2003)

Music however, was a passionate pastime of the middle class and still is sustained as a "vibrant musical tradition" in Bilbao. (Zulaika, 2003) Mansions began to be constructed by the elite in the 1880s and 1890s and organized sporting clubs and events began to be very popular. The work ethic at this time ' was complemented by family networks at home and abroad, by a cosmopolitanism which kept them abreast of new technologies, and by the education their sons abroad, all of which facilitated the importation of new ideas and skills." (Zulaika,2003) Characterizing Bilbao's elite in business were "hard work, personal merit, education, and a disposition to invest rather than consume..." (Zulaika, 2003)

X. SOCIAL REFORM in BILBAO

Zulaika states that while "one reaction to the grime and corruption of industrial Bilbao was nostalgia for the archaic 'purity' of former agrarian life" the reaction just opposite was "the futurism of social reformers inspire by the ideals of Enlightenment." While Christianity was sided against Marxism and Marxism rejected capitalism "for its exploitation of the workers..." Zulaika states that the "cures would not come from religion, but from the metropolis itself, and its capacity for fostering scientific advancement and civic culture. The very forces of ugly repression would turn into the forces of secular redemption." (Zulaika, 2003)

Bilbao was the location for Basque nationalism and the politics that went along with that nationalism which held the goals of "the preservation of the local pre-Indo-European language and culture. Basque traditional ethnographic culture was heavily racialized by European anthropology. The mystified role played by Basques in academic representations is that or an original enclave of non-Indo-European stock, not only in linguistic terms, but in racial ones as well." (Zulaika, 2003) it is unfortunate that Basque nationalism was so reliant on "such academic representations" according to Zulaika (2003)

XI. HEAVY INDUSTRIALIZATION CAUSES PROBLEMS in BILBAO

Douglass and Zulaika (2003) relate that by the time the century came to an end "the financial institutions had moved to the Ensanche, the control center" of the economy of Bilbao and it was believed that the city must be expanded even more than previously. In the beginning of the planning it was conceived that 70,000 residents would be planned for however by 1924 there were more than 140,000, more than double what had been anticipated. Resulting was a problem with housing and this problem was one in which "could not be resolved within the restricted quarters of the original enlargement." (Zulaika, 2003)

Between the years of 1950 and 1975 the population in Bilbao "increased by 1,112,000 bringing the total population to 2,556,000." (Zulaika, 2003) Zulaika relates that this economic model, one that was heavily industrialized was unable to be maintained and added to this was the severe affects to the economy of the Basques of the economic crisis that was international in nature in the latter part of the 1970s. The small size of the economy and little diversification in the heavy industrialization resulted in the Basque economy being "highly dependent on external factors." (Zulaika, 2003)

Structural changes are noted by Zulaika to have occurred in that "the industry sector shrank from 47.9% of the Basque economy in 1972 to 41.8% in 1985. At the same time the sector grew from 43.1% in 1972 to 50.3% in 1985. Finally, after 1981, investments improved due to the improved international situation, a better benefit ratio for enterprises, the recovery of the NEP, the lowering of interest rates, the consolidation of democracy, public financing of horizontal investment, sectorial plans for reconversion, and Spain's entrance into the EEC." (Zulaika, 2003)

The following chart lists the comparative percentage participation of the first six sector of the industrial development in Spain and the Basque country as stated in the work of Zuliaka (2003).

Comparative percentage participation of the first six sector of the industrial development in Spain and the Basque country

Basque Country

Spain

1982-1986

1981-1985

Steel and Iron 28.7

Food, Drink and Tobacco 9.5

Tools and metallurgic products 8.7

Paper 5.7

Electronic materials 5.6

Automobiles 4.1

Construction excluded

Source: Zulaika (2003)

The primary indicator of the severe nature of the economic crisis is stated to have been that of unemployment and especially among women and youth as 194,000 positions of employment were lost in the Basque economy between 1973 and 1985. During the 1960s the population was in excess of 900,000 and the unemployment rate was at 23.1% while Spain was at 21.5% and other European countries was at a mere comparative ten percent. In Bilbao, unemployment was in excess of 20% during the 1990s. The birthrate and resulting population rate in Bilbao experienced a drastic decrease in the latter part of the 1970s and this was added to a "negative migration." (Zulaika,2003)