{"id":144262,"date":"2025-02-19T18:27:46","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T17:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/turismovasco.com\/mining-museum-of-the-basque-country-a-mine-of-basque-history\/"},"modified":"2025-02-19T18:27:46","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T17:27:46","slug":"mining-museum-of-the-basque-country-a-mine-of-basque-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/turismovasco.com\/en\/bizkaia\/what-to-see-in-bizkaia\/mining-museum-of-the-basque-country-a-mine-of-basque-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Mining Museum of the Basque Country, a mine of Basque history"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mining Museum of the Basque Country, the guardian of an important part of the recent history of our people.<\/strong><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

We visited the Mining Museum of the Basque Country, an atypical museum, a museum with character and soul, a museum created by and for the people. Its founder, Carmelo Uriarte, guided by the fear that a whole way of life would fall into oblivion, was gathering all kinds of tools related to mining. This initiative was soon seconded by other former miners like him, causing the number of pieces in their possession to increase exponentially. <\/p>\n

With no place to store these treasures, the Abanto-Zierbana town council ceded the old slaughterhouse of the municipality in order to protect from oblivion all those witnesses of the mining exploitation in the Basque Country.<\/p>\n

\"Basque<\/a>

Basque Country mining museum locomotive<\/p><\/div>\n

Thanks to the work and passion of these former miners, the support of the Abanto-Zierbena City Council and the development project of the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, today we have a place where we can contemplate and understand part of our history, tradition and culture.<\/p>\n

Being a miner once meant much more than a simple job in the Basque Country, it was a way of life, a way of life difficult for our elders to forget. In this case, that fragment of Jorge Manrique’s couplets in which he says “any time in the past was better” is difficult to digest. The way of life at that time, far from being similar to what we know today in the Basque Country, meant working in subhuman conditions. <\/p>\n

\"Remains<\/a>

Remains of the mining past of La Arboleda<\/p><\/div>\n

The oldest mining museum in Spain, that is the mining museum of the Basque Country. The museum was created in 1986 and is located in the old slaughterhouse in the municipality of Gallarta, a few meters from one of the most important mines in Bizkaia, the Concha II mine. <\/p>\n