When the Guggenheim Urdaibai project began to be discussed for the first time around 2009, the Zain Dezagun Urdaibai partnership began its work by promoting information, self-organization and mobilization. Thus emerged the associative platform of Urdaibai, currently active. Among all of us, we managed to get that project at the time that they intended to get up in the Colony of Sukarrieta relegated. However, the main promoters, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, did not give in.

Ten years later, by 2018, that old music began to be heard again, but with more decibels. In the absence of a museum, the former promoters expressed their intention to build two, this time incredible, in collaboration with MITECO (Ministry of Ecological Transition).

Yes or yes! They want to impose on us the great tourist project we all know. Two museum pieces, around the old factory of Dalia de Gernika and in the shipyard of Murueta, and a connection between them, through the so-called Via Verde, which in addition to becoming an exhibition space intend to privatize at least sporadically or partially.

For this reason, the Zain Dezagun Urdaibai Association has been leading the defense of the Urdaibai Reserve for years, and this will continue to be the case, with the brand Zain Dezagun Urdaibai, a legitimized association to go to court for his career in Urdaibai. That is why, using our organisational autonomy, we see the need to distance ourselves to some extent from other emerging groups, at least in part during so many years of development – which will soon be 50 years from the formation of our origin Zain Dezagun Busturialdea – and therefore in a disdained way our work. Let us ensure that Urdaibai continues fully and seeks to achieve the proposed objective. In order to do this, it is necessary, among other things, to provide financial assistance to enable us to halt again the mega-tourism project that is intended to be imposed in the Reserve. To the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve and to the Basque Country itself, perhaps we are facing the most serious attack of all time. We have been raising money through social media for weeks to follow the path we have taken to court, with the same group that has been with us for years.

We know that the laws are in our favour. We also know that all this will last a long time, and that once in legal flour, we will need more wheat than ever for our daily bread. Our guarantee is the journey we have spent over 40 years defending Busturialdea and especially the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve.

Doroteo Zobaran Kaltzada, President of Zain Dezagun Urdaibai (ZDU)