ABSTRACT
This chapter charts the trajectory of unique venture, whose career spanned the troubled years of the transition to democracy in the Basque Country, investigates the reasons for its development and decline, and explores the cultures of commemoration, setting the story in local, regional, Spanish and European context. Memories of the site remain a popular vehicle for nostalgia among those who were young during those years, in Bilbao and other parts of the Basque Country. The population of Bilbao itself, the likeliest source of regular revenue for the Artxanda amusement park, had multiplied tenfold between 1877 and 1975, to reach 394,439 at the latter census. The heavy industries of Bilbao and district were the worst sufferers, and the population fell while immigration went into reverse. The comparison suggests that the Parque de Atracciones de Vizcaya, on its cramped, cloud-capped mountain site, was parochial, and tied in to the political expedients of a dying regime.
