The bigger picture
The Guggenheim isn’t
the only top-quality
Bilbao gallery. Take
time to visit the
excellent Museo
de Bellas Artes,
for Basque and
Spanish works
“And look,” Paul says, proffering a bottle
of txakoli. “The white wine here is different
to San Sebastián’s. We use the same grape,
but theirs is sparkling. Ours has no bubbles.”
He pours some out for me, the chilled wine
causing condensation to form on the glass in
seconds. It’s crisp, fruity and sublimely fresh.
“No bubbles, just good wine,” says Paul.
“That tells you something about Bilbao.”TAKE ME TO THE RIVER
None of which is to say that the city lacks
fizz. Bilbao can be showy, even flamboyant
at times. Its transformation over recent
decades has left a very visible legacy, with
one particular project standing as a (literally)
shining example. When it opened in 1997,
the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao had the
world’s cultural commentators falling over
themselves with excitement. Its giant,
sinuous, metallic form was likened to a cross
between a palace and a ship. Today, over two
decades on, the museum remains a world-
class attraction, inside and out.
Perhaps inevitably, the Guggenheim has
its own Michelin-starred restaurant, Nerua
Guggenheim Bilbao. Focused on seasonal
Basque ingredients, its best-known dishes
include a sole and clam cream soup and a
smoked eel ravioli with beetroot and greenapple. Maritime influences are everywhere
you turn in this port city, from the set menus
to the architecture. I even arrive by overnight
ferry, and there aren’t many city-break
destinations where you can do that.
“It’s hard to explain how much Bilbao
has changed since the 1970s,” guide Miriam
Ruíz López tells me as we wander the streets
around energetic Plaza Moyúa. Around us,
grand hotels look out over trim lawns and
curvy, Norman Foster-designed subway
entrances. “People know us now for our art
and our riverside architecture, but when I was
growing up there was an urban myth that the
water was so dirty that if you fell in, you’d die.”
Bilbao’s long history has been shaped by
its estuary location. From its beginnings
in the year 1300, this has always been a city
of seafarers, traders and shipbuilders, a
place happy to draw its influences from all
compass points. At the same time, of course,
it’s also somewhere that prides itself on its
self-determination. A case in point: the city’s
top-flight football team, Athletic Bilbao,
famously still employs a Basque-only policy
for its player recruitment. In all sorts of
respects, Madrid is a distant notion.
The produce used by the city’s bars
and restaurants also belongs squarely to
the region. At the Mercado de la Ribera,Jul/Aug 2020 125BILBAO