We weren’t thinking of Basque Country in early 2026 when we bought plane tickets to Spain’s northern city of Bilbao. Our purpose was to visit and admire the late architect Frank Ghery’s masterpiece, his Guggenheim Museum. As museum lovers this would be a special trip. We hadn’t fully taken into account that beyond the museum how surprisingly different Bilbao and its territory of northeastern Spain would be from other parts of the country.