Faced with the project by the Provincial Assembly of Bizkaia and the Basque Government to install a new Guggenheim site with two buildings in Urdaibai, we, the undersigned artists and culture agents, feel compelled to take a stand, as we believe the attitude of these institutions is profoundly irresponsible toward the cultural field which we are part of.

First and foremost, we express our solidarity with the citizens’ movement Guggenheim Urdaibai Stop in demanding that this privileged natural environment be respected. We cannot accept that, in the name of art and culture, nature can be harmed. An environment that has been declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO must be cared for by everyone. We, as cultural agents, must be the first to raise our voices against a project that will endanger the biodiversity of Urdaibai’s flora and fauna.

However, our concerns go beyond Urdaibai. We want to ask the relevant cultural institutions—the Provincial Council of Bizkaia and the Basque Government—what medium-term cost estimates have been made for this project, not only for its construction but also for its maintenance. From which budgets will these amounts be drawn? How will it affect other cultural activities, especially those carried out in Euskara (the Basque language)? Knowing that the Basque Government’s current annual financial support to the Guggenheim Bilbao is approximately 8 million euros, we find it hard to believe that this new investment will not have a direct impact on the cultural budget. We demand responsibility and transparency from the institutions: we demand that they make public the calculations we assume they have done, and that they sincerely explain what the repercussions on the cultural sector will be.

Finally, in the same vein, we want to state that the project to build a new Guggenheim museum anywhere in the Basque Country does not respond to the needs, desires, or proposals of the Basque cultural scene. Cultural agents from different fields have been informing the institutions about the problems they face, starting with the precariousness of creators and continuing with the lack of promotion, among other issues. However, the institutions have not developed any strategic cultural plan that identifies and diagnoses these problems or proposes solutions. The major investments of recent years, particularly in the province of Bizkaia, have focused on large-scale constructions and renovations—isolated actions with a significant budgetary impact but with no effect on content creation, on the development of creative careers, or on collaboration networks. Despite the significant investment, the impact on the cultural world has been virtually negligible, showing how deaf the institutions are to the voices of cultural agents.

This is because, increasingly, institutions are viewing culture as a tool to attract tourism and entertain the masses, rather than as a vehicle for building critical and collective identities. Prioritizing a museum that the cultural community neither asked for nor wants over a strategic cultural plan that includes all the agents of our territory shows that the true target audience is tourists—not those of us who live in the Basque Country. That is why we are not only demanding an end to the Guggenheim Urdaibai project but also demanding to be heard, respected, and taken into consideration by the institutions responsible for promoting a culture that is local, rich, and alive for the people of our land.

Not in our name!

Guggenheim Urdaibai Stop!