The project to build a new Guggenheim museum in the Urdaibai biosphere reserve is on hold, at least temporarily, in order to analyze whether it is viable. This has been announced by the Basque Government and the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, institutions that have given themselves a period of two years to analyze the “viability” and “feasibility” of the project, questioned due to its location in a sensitive area from a point of view. environmental and because of the doubts that exist about whether it can really be viable.
The decision was made at the last meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and communicated this Monday by the Lehendakari, Iñigo Urkullu, and the Deputy General of Bizkaia, Elixabete Etxanobe. The head of the Basque Executive has indicated that the museum will develop a strategic plan for the period 2024-2025 and within that approach it will be analyzed whether this project, also known as the discontinuous expansion of the Guggenheim Bilbao, has any signs of going ahead.
Urkullu has stated that it must be taken into account that the Guggenheim Bilbao is linked to an agreement with the Guggenheim Museum New York, and has explained that the American museum is in the period of electing its direction and renewing its board of trustees, a process which will culminate in June “probably.”
Although these institutions leave the door open for the project to move forward after the aforementioned reflection process, the truth is that Urdaibai’s Guggenheim approach is greatly affected, since the institutions called upon to defend its possibilities question its viability.
This position is not new in the case of the Basque Government, which has always maintained its reservations regarding the project. The Provincial Council of Bizkaia, however, had been defending this approach against all odds, vehemently, against a very significant and transversal current of opinion. The position expressed by Urkullu and Etxanobe shows that there are doubts regarding the viability of the project even among its promoters, both in Euskadi and in New York, and places the questioned approach of bringing the Guggenheim brand to the heart of this project in a very weak position. Biosphere Reserve.
This position represents a new departure for the project, which was born in 2008 sponsored by the Provincial Council of Bizkaia. At first, it was planned to locate this expansion of the Guggenheim Bilbao in the town of Sukarrieta, also in the heart of the Urdaibai biosphere reserve, although in an existing building, the work of architect Ricardo Bastida and built in 1925.
The economic crisis wiped out that project, which was surprisingly resurrected during the last legislature. The previous deputy general of Bizkaia, Unai Rementeria, rescued it with a new approach: two headquarters, in the towns of Gernika and Murueta, linked by a six-kilometer path that would cross the heart of the reserve. Since then, the Provincial Council of Bizkaia has been staunchly defending the project, with the support of the management of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, while the Basque Government has shown a more ambivalent position.
Not in vain, the new proposal presents obvious difficulties, even from a legal point of view, and requires the modification of the regulations for the protection of the reserve, a section in which some steps have already been taken. The main complexity involved in the project is to make compatible the arrival of around 140,000 more visitors per year to the heart of this estuary, according to the estimates of its promoters, with the protection of the values ??of a biosphere reserve, the only one in the autonomous community of Euskadi.
The Provincial Council tried to respond to the reluctance generated by this problem by alluding to the fact that the new museum would only open a few months a year, an argument that, however, increased doubts about its viability.
The project was also presented in 2008 as a way to promote the regeneration of the Busturialdea region, an argument that the Provincial Council of Bizkaia continues to allude to. However, there are doubts that a commitment to specialization in tourism, with the externalities that it implies, the type of jobs it generates and a global brand such as Guggenheim as a pole of attraction in a protected area, is the best alternative for a region of its characteristics.
The rejection of the project in the area where it would be located is notable, and a platform against this new Guggenheim brought together thousands of people last October in Gernika.
Regarding the economic boost to the Busturialdea region, the Basque Government and the Bizkaia Provincial Council have shown their commitment to promoting “a competitiveness model of their own” that “protects the well-being” of the 46,000 people who reside in the area, which promotes its economic development, and that “it offers future opportunities to its young people.
The Basque Government and the Provincial Council of Bizkaia have announced that they will promote a plan aimed at coordinating “the development of new economic activities in the region, the supply of water and sanitation, communications, the development of a sustainable tourism model or the revitalization cultural”, as explained by Elixabete Etxanobe.
It will be within the framework of this approach that it will be analyzed whether to build a Guggenheim in the Urdaibai biosphere reserve or whether to finally opt for other opportunities for this protected area.
