There’s more to Bilbao than the Guggenheim Museum. In this week’s guest post, Anil Shamdasani explores the suburban barrio San Ignazio.

TEXT Anil Shamdasani PHOTO Anna Moreno

I am not one of those people who will miss out on anything that a city has to offer purely on the basis of it being ‘too touristy’. There’s a reason that the Taj Mahal, Eiffel Tower and Empire State Building are so popular - we have been surrounded with images of them throughout our lives and seeing them in the flesh does not disappoint. I also think, however, that there is a lot to be said for exploring the suburbs of a city to discover more about how its inhabitants live. After all, I’ve lived in London nearly all of my life and I have yet to meet anyone who lives on Leicester Square.

San Ignazio, in Bilbao, is in many ways a typical barrio of any Basque town. Four- and five-story apartment blocks surround a square lined with a seemingly unsustainable number of bars, interspersed with a butchers, hairdressers, fishmongers, bakers, and so on. A fountain in the centre of the square appears set to come on at random times each day, and early every Saturday evening a band takes to the bandstand and belts out some oldies while grandmothers dance with their grandchildren and the parents stand to the side gossiping.

The younger residents might need to head into the city centre for the livelier nightlife, but a Saturday night always begins with una vuelta of the local bars before jumping on the metro into town, and Sunday morning is a time to reconvene in the same bars to swap stories of the previous night over a coffee. If Sani are playing at home, a crowd heads over to the football pitch to abuse the opposition, the referee and, more often, their hungover friends on the home team before making their way home for lunch with the family.

Taking pride of place in the square is the frontón court, ubiquitous in the Basque Country, although it is used more often by children playing with rackets and a tennis ball than with their hands and the traditional rock-hard pelota. It was in a bar across the square from the court that I first heard the excited shouting and cheers. A brief stroll revealed what all of the excitement was about - two boys were slowly pacing round in the centre of the court, clearly about to fight. A crowd was fast gathering on the steps along the side of the court that doubled as a viewing gallery, and you didn’t have to understand a word of Spanish to recognise the universal playground chant of “Fight! Fight!”

Sadly, the two protagonists showed no signs of giving the crowd what it wanted and continued circling cautiously, despite the efforts of a few spectators who ran onto the court to push the kids towards each other. By this stage, the average age of the crowd had increased significantly as all of the fathers in the barrio wandered over, under orders from their wives to put a stop to the tomfoolery but, instead, getting caught up in the excitement.

Suddenly the crowd did have something to cheer, as the smaller of the two boys tried some sort of kung fu leg sweep. Unfortunately it failed to connect with, let alone topple his larger opponent, who in any case was starting to show a reluctance to fight. He didn’t need to worry, as eventually a few of San Ignazio’s female senior citizens decided to take matters into their own hands. With a mixture of scolding and clips round the ear, they dispersed the crowd and sent the two gladiators home.

There are no fancy new bridges spanning the river as it flows past San Ignazio, no new works by famous sculptors in the square. The majority of the residents I spoke to had never set foot inside the Guggenheim, and the only ‘Guggenheim effect’ they had noticed was soaring property prices which means that the thirtysomethings who had always planned to move out of their parents’ apartments into their own in the area, as their parents had done before them, find themselves unable to do so. As far as they are concerned, the museum and regeneration along the river is aimed squarely at ‘los ricos y guiris’ (‘the rich and foreigners’); they were happy with their home town being seen as the ugly sister to neighbouring San Sebastian. Affectionately referred to by locals as el botxo, Bilbao is a ‘hole’ no longer, but at what cost to its close-knit communities?

About the writer: Anil is the editor of http://www.beatenpaths.net