Campaigners celebrate defeat of proposal to extend Bilbao institution into areas including nature reserve
Environmental groups and local campaigners in the Basque Country have welcomed the scrapping of a controversial project that would have seen an outpost of Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum built on a Unesco biosphere reserve that is a vital habitat for local wildlife and migrating birds.
The scheme’s backers, who include the Guggenheim Foundation, the Basque government and local and regional authorities, had claimed the new museum’s twin sites – one in the Basque town of Guernica and one in the nearby Urdaibai reserve – would help revitalise the area, attract investment and create jobs.
But opponents said the scheme was being pushed through without proper consultation and would wreck Urdaibai, a 22,068-hectare site that was declared a biosphere reserve by Unesco in 1984.
In a statement earlier this week, the foundation announced that the project had been abandoned “in light of the territorial, urban planning and environmental constraints and limitations”.
