The Bilbao Blueprint cover art

The Bilbao Blueprint

The Bilbao Blueprint

Listen for free

View show details

About this listen

 We're in Bilbao this week, and it’s got us thinking. How does a football club that refuses to sign non-Basque players manage to qualify for the Champions League, raking in close to €100 million from TV rights, match days, and UEFA money, while Dublin’s best bet is a few fivers from the Conference League? The answer is in economics. The Basques were Europe’s forgotten industrialists, the only region in Spain to undergo a full-blown Industrial Revolution, powered by local iron ore, steel production, and a shipbuilding boom that made Bilbao Spain’s biggest port by 1900. Then they lost it all. Globalisation, China, and the EU opened the floodgates. Unlike post-industrial towns in the UK or Ireland, Bilbao didn’t roll over. They moved the port. They built the Guggenheim. They chose ambition. And they proved that even a small, isolated, ancient people, who speak a pre-Ice Age language with no known relatives, can build a modern economy with global reach. What’s our excuse?

Join the gang! https://plus.acast.com/s/the-david-mcwilliams-podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
No reviews yet