Guggenheim: the Altri of Urdaibai

TXEMA GARCIA WALLS

From Palas de Rei (Lugo) to Murueta (Bizkaia) there are 581 kilometres by road. However, all this distance is reduced to nothing if we consider that their destinies are linked by a full-blown embezzlement, if someone or something does not remedy it first. Both are candidates to be awarded, with different signs, in a macabre lottery. These are two megaprojects with the same formula of robbery of the citizenry based on “public-private” collaboration, a euphemism that consists of giving away public money to economic and business elites eager to make profits.

Thus, while in the first town they want to build a huge cellulose factory, in the second the proposal is to reduce the splendid nature that surrounds it to the insignificant condition of decoration of a foreign museum that only seeks to use this space as a marketing hook to install not one, but two locations of its particular exhibition garden, paid for with other people's money.

The issue is about couples. Two parties, the PP (in Galicia) and the PNV (in the Basque Country) pursuing the same neoliberal and right-wing policy: emptying the public coffers to make their own clientele rich. Two regions (Ulloa, in Galicia, with 482 km² and 9.226 inhabitants) and Busturialdea (in Bizkaia, with 282 km² and 45.000 inhabitants) abandoned to their fate by these two formations for many decades. And two multinational companies, Altri and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, respectively, that want to make the “big hit” in their already speculative careers.

Palas de Rei and Murueta (and nearby Gernika) “twinned” by the new organized mob that under the umbrella of a supposed legality buys governments and wills, activates institutional springs, squanders public resources, manipulates consciences, grants licenses, opens doors, “clears” obstacles, looks the other way when it comes to facing the economic elites, and serves the natural resources of all on a silver platter, to be consumed by the voracity of a system that is handled at will by a few who are at the top of the predation of life on the planet.

The perpetrators of these massacres are so similar that they could be blood “brothers”. Putative sons of that clan that brings together chieftains and jauntxos, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, and they consider that the Earth, all of it, belongs to them by divine right and, if it doesn’t, they change the laws and the problem is over.

Palas del Rei, the whole of Galicia, is awaiting a “death sentence”. The company Altri wants to build a huge cellulose factory bordering the Serra do Careón, in Lugo, a Special Conservation Area of ​​the Natura Network. The details of the project frighten any mind with a minimum of sensitivity for existence.

If it goes ahead, this company will use 46 million litres of water a day from the Ulla River (as much as the entire province of Lugo consumes), will dump 30 million litres of contaminated waste water into the river until it reaches the Arousa estuary, will also poison the remaining water, will install a 75-metre-high chimney near the Camino de Santiago to release sulphur, sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and particulate matter into the atmosphere, will endanger primary sectors and will require much more eucalyptus to be planted in northern Galicia, impoverishing biodiversity. And if all this were not enough, the company will be given 250 million euros of public money from the Next Generation funds for its implementation, which will serve to bring about the collapse of a natural environment of great value.

Five hundred and eighty-one kilometres to the east, the tragedy also takes on dramatic overtones. The power of the local jauntxos installed in the institutions (Diputación Foral de Bizkaia and the Basque Government) has decided to give the “American friend” the jewel in the crown: the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve, the only natural space in Euskadi declared under UNESCO protection since 1984.

To this end, with the collaboration of the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) and in a “trade of cards” between the PNV and the Sánchez Government, a “friendly company” (Astilleros de Murueta, where one of the Guggenheim Museum headquarters would be located) will be forgiven the numerous expenses derived from the contamination to which it has subjected the area, by means of a sum of 40 million public money. And not yet satisfied with this, the Provincial Council of Bizkaia intends to buy the public domain land on which this company is installed after its activity license expired in 2018 and despite continuing to maintain it at present, all of which constitutes alleged criminal acts of prevarication and dereliction of responsibility or, at least, of omissions in the field of public administration.

The absurdity, however, does not end here. At this moment, and for about a month now, and with the collaboration in this case of José María Gorroño, mayor of Gernika, who has facilitated the approval of his corporation, the demolition of the Dalia warehouses is underway, which is the site intended for the first of the Guggenheim Museum buildings. It is an old cutlery factory, the work of architect Luis María de Gana, which became the most important in Europe in the seventies of the last century, and which is considered by experts such as the Basque Association of Industrial Heritage and Public Works (AVPIOP), as having “significant heritage value”.

Even more worrying is the fact that this project for two new Guggenheim Museum headquarters is intended to be based on an area, the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve, which in its 22.000 hectares is home to a great biodiversity, with 729 species of fauna, 821 species of flora, 86 habitats and 52 sites of geological interest, 3 Special Conservation Areas (SCA) and a Special Protection Area for Birds (SPA), integrated into the Natura 2000 Network. In addition, it has been a Ramsar Wetland of natural interest since 1993 and is home to 85 species in danger of extinction or of community interest.

All this natural and scenic heritage will be at the service of the “American friend”, the new Mister Marshall (the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation) who, without paying a euro, will receive two free, turnkey museums paid for with the sweat of the Basque citizens of this part of the country that is Euskadi. And what will that cost be? No less than 140 million euros (possibly much more) that will come from the public coffers to satisfy only the whim and megalomania of a Foundation that is receiving numerous requests to install its franchise throughout the world. What is not talked about, however, are the reasons that have made many cities in the world such as Salzburg (Austria), Helsinki (Finland), Tokyo (Japan), Massachusetts (USA), Varese (Italy), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Guadalajara (Mexico), Taichung (Taiwan)… have finally declined to install it. Could it be that we Basques are the most foolish or that our leaders are willing to give away and sacrifice our landscape, our natural and economic resources for the benefit of others?

Palas del Rei, Murueta/Gernika, new black spots to add to a runaway race to wipe out life on the planet by converting biodiversity into monocultures, whether of pine or eucalyptus, or wind or photovoltaic parks destroying habitats, or refineries and coke plants like Petronor in Muskiz, or unnecessary sub-river canals and highways that only promote excessive car use… or by placing museums in Biosphere Reserves, or polluting megaprojects… Are you going to let unscrupulous people and institutions destroy the Nature that surrounds you? Are you not going to defend what belongs to all of us - and not just a few?

Txema Garcia Paredes He is a journalist and writer. Member of the platform «Guggenheim Urdaibai STOP»