ABSTRACT
Thedourcity of Bilbao, located on the Basque coast of Northeastern Spain on the Bay of Biscay, has not exactly been an attraction for tourists to the peninsula over the years—nothing, that is, compared to the varied allure represented by Seville and Granada, or even Madrid and Barcelona. Bilbao is indirectly involved in a topic taken up by Kurlansky late in his book—the whys and wherefores of the construction of the new Guggenheim Museum designed by Frank Gehry. In darker tones, Kurlansky brings some insight into the motivation of the most violent of the Basque terrorist groups now active: the eta. But Kurlansky is a valiant defender of the Basque cause, and his bias becomes too evident—he is an apologist for the autonomous ambitions of a certain sector of the Basque people, who are by no means a majority.
