Every era has its own temples, depending on what power has decided people like at every moment. Normally, those who far outnumber the person's measurements lead us to look up. If the cathedrals were gods, if the neoclassical ministries were more secular powers, if the factories were labor… As you pass by, you can appreciate greatness, if you go in the direction of that transcendence, if you walk in the direction of the horrors. Tourism has reused all of them, changing meaning, and has built new ones, like museums, like the Guggenheim.

The temple is twenty-five years old and the criticisms that at the time were also considered ridiculous have been silenced, because the reflections that do not suit the power are ridiculous. There was talk of cost, paid from the department of Culture; it was asked if it was a museum at the height of the Basque culture, for what it was asked… And the answer was slap and given. The museum has been a success: it has more than fulfilled the expectations of the promoters. Bilbao is not the old Bilbao, they say, thanks to the museum. Because the temple should not be made to our measure, but to our height, to transcend, to look up, in the direction of what power has decided at that moment, and at this moment, about what we have to believe.

And what we have to believe is not art, we are not informed of success through artistic concepts, which a Basque now knows more about art than before, through the measures of the potential that we have now to represent ourselves. We are given economic data, as the investment has been more than compensated by tourism. When we pass by the temple, we are as small as by a cathedral, moving religion to the porch.

Finally, we are tourists on the sidewalks of our streets.