Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
In A Post-Industrial Wasteland
I
n January 2000 my fish in the river. Here we are We ended up in Zorro-
partner and I moved to trying to create a sustainable zaurre by sheer luck, or
a village in Spain. So far, barrio (urban neighbour- maybe fate. Looking to buy
so familiar. But this is not hood), in the face of financial a flat within cycling distance
your typical story about life and political interests that of the city centre, the very
in a sleepy rural idyll. The see the area as a playground first place we viewed was a
area where we live, the for speculative development. spacious old apartment over-
Zorrozaurre Peninsula in Almudena and I met in looking the river. Thanks
Bilbao, is a post-industrial Dublin in 1997, working to- to the decaying neighbour- Top:
wasteland at the heart of gether in a research group on hood, it was a bargain, The waterfront of Zorro-
Spain’s third biggest city. the environmental impacts even by local standards. zaurre seen from the river.
Fifteen minutes’ walk from of buildings and cities. Then To clinch it, a Brazilian friend
the Guggenheim Museum, she found a job back home was renting the flat just Above:
that titanium-clad temple to in Bilbao, the main city in downstairs – serendipity! Mural on a squat.
postmodernism, is an urban the Basque Country of north- We closed the sale, moved
village of 500 people, living ern Spain. After experiencing in and soon felt at home in Bottom left:
alongside ruined factories the mountains, the wave the low-rent, bohemian Dressed up for carnival.
with natural grass roofs, lashed coast, and a culture atmosphere of the peninsula,
where lizards dart among where life still seemed to be where local working people Bottom right:
mosses and samphire, and about quality, not quantity, mixed with squatters, immi- Nature reclaiming the flat
kingfishers and cormorants I was ready to join her. grants and the odd artist. roofs of abandoned units.