ABSTRACT
In a workshop with networkers from different development agencies in the Basque Country, an exercise on shared history was performed as an introduction to a seminar on the role of local policy networks in the development of the region. The participants were asked to pinpoint critical events of the past that would be of assistance in understanding their current efforts to create or develop such networks. Most of them spoke of thwarted attempts to create these networks or, once created, to keep them alive. Some of the participants had failed on more than one occasion to create networks while others had been struggling for years to start one.
