Day Trip to Vitoria-Gasteiz

We last visited Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital of Alava and the Basque Autonomous Community in 2018. Since then, a new museum opened in 2021, the Center / Memorial to the Victims of Terrorism. We’ve been wanting to visit, and we finally made it there last week (May 18).

Like Bilbao, Vitoria is an hour and 15-minute bus ride away. Unlike Bilbao and San Sebastian, Vitoria is inland and has a reputation for being chilly, especially during the winter when Basque locals joke its name is “Siberia-Gasteiz.” Fortunately, we had decent spring weather for our visit. The center of Vitoria has numerous attractive older buildings, squares, and churches.

After stopping for coffee, we headed to the museum, which is in the former Bank of Spain building.

The museum is about and the impact of terrorism on society, democracy, and human rights, highlighting victims and their families. The focus is on terrorist groups and acts of terrorism in Spain, but it also incorporates terrorist events from around the world, including 9-11.

Living in Spain, and in the Basque region, we felt visiting this museum was an important part of our political and cultural education. Most of the terrorist acts in Spain were perpetrated by ETA, an armed Basque separatist group that operated between 1959 and 2018. ETA killed 829 people, including 340 civilians, and injured more than 2,200. There are small plaques on the sidewalk in San Sebastian memorializing the assassinations that happened here. (I highly recommend the movie Maixabel, which should be available on Netflix, if you are curious about this part of Spanish/Basque history.) Our interest was vindicated as we gained a broader understanding of terrorism’s power and how governments respond. Spain has also experienced right-wing and “jihadist” terrorism. (Another Netflix recommendation is a documentary about the Madrid train bombings on March 11, 2004, 11M:Terror in Madrid.) We had the entire museum to ourselves, which made it easy to “enjoy.”

We explored the city a bit more before heading to eat at Waska, where we enjoyed a 3-course lunch. We had a cold gazpacho made with berries that was vibrant and delicious.

We are now looking forward to our third planned day trip next week: Bayonne, France.

Hasta pronto,

Shana & Jeff 

Day Trip to Bilbao

Last week, we took a day trip to Bilbao to see a Miro exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum. We started with coffee and a pastry at a very nice pasteleria near the museum. We were surpised to find that the person serving us was from Hawaii (!). This young women had moved to Bilboa two years ago and spoke very good Spanish, probably due to her Basque mother. She was impressed with our Spanish, but we all agreed that Euskera is just much too hard to learn.

At the museum, we started with the Miro exhibit. We have been to the Miro Foundation in Barcelona several times, and it is a museum that we really like. But this exhibit, which contained many works we had never seen before, both from private collections and museums we have never visited, did not impress us much. This was the most interesting piece, both for its form and for its inclusion of many elements that Miro used often:

Fortunately, as is often the case, the other temporary exhibits at the museum were better than the one we went to see. First we saw a work by a Japanese artist named Yayoi Kusama whose work tends to be immersive. The piece we saw was just that: a small room (only 4 people admitted at a time) with mirrors all around and hanging lights. We were not certain exactly what it was supposed to signify, but it was pretty cool.

Next, we saw an exhibit of a black British artist named Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. The exhibit was of both paintings and charcol drawings of black people done between 2020 and 2023. I was particularly impressed by the pieces done in charcol.  I am not  sure why exactly, but there was something about the almost causualness of the drawings that I really liked. Even better, the artist is also a writer, and our favorite part of her exhibit was reading one of her short stories.

The third exhibit was of a 20th century Viennese artist named Oskar Kokoschka. Kokoschka has a style that was controversial from the beginning, especially his portraits. And, after the Nazi's came to power in Germany nine pieces of his work was included in an exhibition of "degenerate artists." Well, Kokoschka didn't like the Nazis any more than they liked him, and his designation as a degenerate artist led him to paint "Self Portrait of a Degenerate Artist" in 1937:

Kokoschka was active in movements against the Nazis throughout the war (he fled from his native Vienna to Prague in 1934 and later to the UK where he spent the war years). He even painted posters calling for aid to Basque children after the Gernika bombing.

Overall, we had a very nice time at the museum, and were happy to have such beautiful weather in Bilbao. Here is Shana with one of two Chilida statues newly located on the terraza of the museum with the "bull bridge" in the background.

After the museum, we took a walk to the restaurant where we had a late Spanish lunch (of course). Lunch was very good, especially the cold avacado soup that was my appetizer (sorry, no pictures - too busy eating). After lunch, it was back to the bus station for our return to San Sebastian. 

We have more one-day outings planned in May, so be sure to check back for more culture from the Basque region.

Hasta pronto,

Jeff and Shana