It’s easy to forget today the proposal to build a franchise for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, was deeply divisive when first proposed in the early 1990s. The idea that the autonomous Basque authorities would finance every aspect of the museum, while exercising no control over its internationally-orientated artistic policy, was anathema to many who saw Basque culture fighting for its own survival.
Yet today, architect Frank Gehry’s monumental titanium palace has become the icon of the regeneration of this once decayed industrial city, as many of its erstwhile critics have conceded, and it attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists annually.
However, a project aspiring to repeat the “Bilbao miracle”, and extend the museum into the heart of the region’s most important biodiversity hotspot, has sparked equally furious and perhaps better-informed opposition, and the outcome remains very open.
The plan, under consideration for nearly 20 years, is to build a hub and conference centre in the historic town of Guernica, officially Gernika in Basque. Much more contentiously, this hub is to be linked with an entirely new museum on the site of a decommissioned (though still active) shipyard, at Murueta. This site lies at an especially sensitive point on the Urdaibai estuary, which carries Guernica’s river Oka to the sea.
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These two points would be connected by a walkway/cycleway/light rail route right along the vulnerable edge of the water body. The estuary is a major migration flyway, as well as a wintering ground and a breeding area for marine and marshland birds.
On paper, Urdaibai enjoys a very high level of environmental protection. It is a Unesco biosphere reserve, a Ramsar-recognised wetland of international importance, including two special bird protection areas (SPAs) and three special areas of conservation (SACs) as part of the EU’s Natura 2000 network. But as we know all too well in Ireland, such protections offer few real-world guarantees.
Seventy-seven local, national and international environmental groups, from the Mediterranean Alliance for Wetlands, and 250 scientists, have recently supported a “red alert” manifesto, appealing for the Guggenheim plan to be abandoned, directed to the Spanish ministry for ecological transition, Unesco and Ramsar.
“What they plan here is an ecocide,” says one of the opposition, Joseba del Villar, who works in the area as a biologist and photographer. “Destroying nature in exchange for massive tourism and cement.”
It’s certainly true that the new tourists will hardly be coming to see the birds: Urdaibai already boasts a discreet but very well equipped observation centre for nature lovers.
The view from the Guggenheim side of the argument is, unsurprisingly, different, if often hard to pin down precisely. The museum claims the project is a significant attempt to engage contemporary culture with issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss and degradation, with many of the artworks, both along the walkway and in Murueta itself, to be dedicated to these themes.
A senior Guggenheim source, close to the project from the outset but who prefers not to be named, argues there has never been a more appropriate time to bring these two themes together, with many artists already engaged in such synergies, and that Urdaibai is an ideal place to highlight their work.
He also notes the hinterland is the second-most depressed area economically in the Basque Country, and says the project will bring badly needed jobs and services. Certainly, some local mayors and their supporters want to see the new Guggenheim project happen.
He is dismissive of claims extra visitors (up to 140,000 during the summer months) would cause significant disturbance to the bird life, and claims the walkway connection was chosen precisely to minimise such impacts.
Besides, he says, “Urdaibai is not the Amazon. The beaches in summer are already packed with people.” He does not grant much credibility to the scientific credentials of the opposition, though he cannot name a single scientist who has supported the Guggenheim-Urdaibai project.
“Many of these opposition groups are very ideologically motivated,” he says,” adding they would not be so opposed to the initiative “if it did not bear an American and Jewish name”.
Aitor Gallarza, a biologist with long experience in the area, agrees only that there is already far too much disturbance for the area’s important bird populations. “There are fewer birds here all the time, and people can enter from all points, denying the birds the space and tranquillity they need.”
But what is required, he adds, is not a new cultural industry but the ecological restoration of sites such as Murueta, which have been degraded for decades.
“This new museum could be anywhere,” he says, “they have given no explanation why they want to do it here. They have given us no detail of what the museum will really consist in.” He is sceptical about the attachment of labels such as “ecological” to the walkway. “We can’t have more people all over the place and call it sustainable.”
Lore Terri, the local Greenpeace representative, says “culture should not threaten biodiversity, especially where there is a nucleus of protected sites”.
“This place is very rich in species. It is the second most important migratory pathway for the spoonbill, and a significant area for osprey and Egyptian vulture, all species that need places to rest in quiet. It was home to the critically endangered European mink.” The latter is now awaiting a reintroduction programme.
“We talk about the European nature restoration law, and then they want to do all this building and subsequent disturbance, which will have the opposite effect, no matter what they say,” she says.
The claims made by the only major report on the museum’s plans, made in a 2009 draft by New York architects Cooper Robertson and updated in 2022, are vague if ambitious. While recognising the need for more stakeholder input, the report states that the Murueta museum will be “as radically new a paradigm for the area as the Guggenheim was for Bilbao”.
The report, which is summarised on the museum’s rather sketchy account of the project on its website, lays great stress on the idea that the visiting experience will be much less frenetic than is the norm at its giant urban forbear. It asserts that, through consideration of the environment and sustainability in the context of the biosphere reserve, the museum will respond to climate change and “be a positive influence on its surroundings”.
It goes so far as to say the museum will have “an important role in advanced ecology” and in “regenerating endangered and damaged ecosystems” as well as effecting social and economic transformation. But it is distinctly thin on the specifics, just as it is on how the museum will “host artworks attuned to the local landscapes and ecosystems”. An artistic focus on ecological themes is certainly desirable, but hardly at the cost of damaging and disturbing crucially important ecological sites.
Eider Gotxi, chair of the citizen’s group Guggenheim-Urdaibai STOP, questions these aspirations. She freely acknowledges the site in the local capital city has done much to “recuperate a degraded area”.
But she emphasises, unlike Bilbao, with its rich infrastructure, Urdaibai cannot support a new influx of tourists: “We just don’t have the resources.”
She is concerned about amendments to the laws protecting the coastline around Murueta, which are being reduced from 100m to 20m to facilitate the construction of the museum, she claims.
She seems to feel her side may be gaining ground. In a recent meeting with the new director of the museum, Miren Arzalluz, she extracted the information that no decision has been taken by the Guggenheim’s complex Basque governing trust as to whether to proceed with the plan or not. “It is still all under reflection,” Gotxi claims Arzalluz conceded.
Arzalluz told The Irish Times it was too early in her tenure to give an interview on the project. But she did send a tentative statement about it which claimed: “The initiative will encourage appreciation and understanding of ecology and nature by increasing and improving the range of environmental, artistic, educational and cultural experiences available to the public.”
Gotxi responded with what is perhaps the central point of the debate: “For us, the reserve is already a living museum of incalculable value in its landscapes, biological, geological and cultural heritage.”
In the UN Decade on Restoration, a Unesco biosphere reserve would surely be better employed by enhancing the biological resources of such a natural treasure rather than putting them in further danger through creating a new artificial one; however attractive it might be.
