ancient cities

76 Bilbao, Spain
levels as the city became the main supplier for Great
Britain during the latter’s imperial apogee prior to
World War I. Structural adjustments in the Basque
industry and the consolidation of liberalization and
centralization policies undertaken by the various
Spanish governments during the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, however, meant that Bilbao’s
industry was much more geared to producing and
selling in a protected Spanish market than competing
in foreign arenas. Following the abolition of the
Basque privilege to import goods duty-free, the city
became fully integrated into the Spanish economy.
In historical terms, Fordist Bilbao was an era of
deglobalization for the city, especially the period
from 1936 to 1973. Through its port, Bilbao continued
to serve as a node in trade between Spain and
the world, but uneven development within Spain
helped Basque industrialists to execute a strategy of
industrial expansion, which strengthened the structural
ties between the city and the nation-state.
These were the times when Bilbao’s per capita
income was the highest of all Spanish cities.
The decades of 1970 and 1980 represented the
crisis of the Fordist model and the transformation
of Bilbao into a “postindustrial” economy through
restructuring and tertiarization. The political atmosphere
in the Basque Country (marked by attempts
by local nationalist elites to gain power quotas
during the Spanish transition to democracy and by
Basque nationalist ETA’s violent fight for independence)
and the overall industrial policy implemented
by the then socialist government in Madrid
greatly influenced the fate of Bilbao’s steel manufacturing
and shipbuilding industries. Because
local plants were not adapted to the environment
of lower industrial demand and had to be downsized
or closed, the global restructuring of these
sectors also contributed to Bilbao’s decay. The
specific ways in which restructuring took place,
however, were matters of political choice at the
national and regional levels. Ironically, Bilbao’s
strengths—Fordist industrial power, entrepreneurship,
and linkages to the world system—made the
city particularly vulnerable to world trends.
Local and regional authorities were slow to
react to the changing economic framework and
circumstances, and Bilbao essentially became a
Rustbelt city, but one with great autonomous
power and state support that—unlike most Rustbelt
cities elsewhere—would give it the resources and
control to overcome a crisis situation. Starting in
the late 1980s, and determined to reposition Bilbao
as a rising metropolis among global cities, the local
authorities developed an ambitious revitalization
plan similar to other struggling urban economies in
the United States and Europe. The critical, most
visible piece of this plan became the Guggenheim
Museum, projected to be built in an area called
Abandoibarra, which became the urban megaproject
in post-Fordist Bilbao.
Abandoibarra: The Urban Megaproject
Abandoibarra—a piece of industrial land in downtown
Bilbao being transformed into a new central
business district—exemplifies the global aspirations
of the new Bilbao. Abandoibarra shows the
contrast between the city’s globalization via revitalization
plans and the “selling the city” strategy
reflected in the planners’ global rhetoric, on the
one hand, and the organizational and political
obstacles present in local urban planning development
and implementation on the other. The potential
of the project to become Bilbao’s territorial
link to the global economy has not yet been realized.
Abandoibarra remains a global project in its
aims but, in practice, is one of only local reach and
impact, with foreign investment playing little significant
role in the redevelopment of this downtown
waterfront area. The role of Bilbao Ría 2000
(an urban development corporation) in the development
of Abandoibarra as manager of the project
was significant, and the many project modifications
implemented over time demonstrate that the
global ambitions of the local elites often have to
face internal strife and obstacles that might ultimately
slow down or immobilize global megaprojects.
In view of Abandoibarra’s fate, one is led to
think that, because it has influenced contemporary
urban planning’s organizational and managerial
tools, globalization has acquired a relatively new
dimension in recent times, with megaprojects representing
the physical manifestation of urban
elites’ entrepreneurialism and global aspirations.
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
All in all, however, it is the Guggenheim project that
has put Bilbao on the map and the enterprise that
represents the latest of Bilbao’s globalization efforts.
The motives of Basque political leaders in bringing
the museum to Bilbao, after a negotiation process in