A very natural Basilica

Those who comb gray hair will recognize the convents of Santa Clara and Religious Adorers, already disappeared, the headquarters of the Augustinian nuns, the convent of Santa Mónica, still standing and today surrounded by residential buildings, or the House of Spirituality adjoining the Basilica. The Casa de los Venerables, the corner-shaped building where retired priests live, and the one known as Palacio de El Pino also continue to serve. The latter is a beautiful three-story building where he settled with his family when the first known Basque photographer arrived from Liverpool in 1878, Eulalia Abaitua. How many thousands of hours did the professional spend in the basement developing, viewing and filing the images that came out of her camera! A construction that survives today as the headquarters of the Bilbao Gynecological Clinic surrounded by a modern building that complements it.

The one that did not resist the passage of time -and the construction companies- was the other mansion near the Basilica and that once starred in the site delimited by the streets Virgen de Begoña and Elizalde. The pickaxe acted in the 1970s to build three high-end residential blocks on the same plot, which maintain reminiscences of the green park that bordered the old building inside. In fact, despite the fact that the new constructions have engulfed many old lots, The entire area of ​​Begoña still breathes a sensation of purer oxygen than the rest of the city. Thus, the flirtatious headquarters of the Social Institute of the Navy in the shape of a baserri remains today surrounded by grass and trees despite the invasion caused by the construction of two large sanitary buildings. On the one hand, the heavy block of the Virgen Blanca clinical facilities attached to the aforementioned Bilbao Gynecological Clinic. On the other, the ‘U’-shaped construction, which reaches five heights in some areas, and which today offers different Osakidetza outpatient services.

And on the outer perimeter of the VIP area in this image, some of the first modest blocks of flats can be seen, and not so much so, which would later colonize the slopes of the Artagan hill. The building at portals 58 and 60 on Calle Prim had already been erected in 1959, some of the houses in the future neighborhood of Dolaretxe were a reality and several plots were being prepared to build more homes. Do not forget that In subsequent decades, this entire area had a feverish construction activity to form part of the populous neighborhood of Santutxu that we know today.

Major road infrastructure project

It also highlights a road infrastructure work that, even today, would be a great project for what it meant in terms of service for the city. It is the construction of one of the first accesses to the town with a double lane that was designed in a straight line, no matter who fell. And this time one of the most remembered vestiges by the neighbors was demolished: the old Town Hall of the Begoña porch, annexed by Bilbao in 1924 and which was located at the back of the Basilica, with a square in front. The route being executed in the direction of Etxebarri and one of the mouths of the two tunnels built to maintain the continuity of the hillside and generate the new public square can be perfectly observed. Another reference element is the building that narrowly escaped being affected by the road layout of the avenue. It is the chalet that the Gutiérrez family built, whose patriarch was a well-known civil engineer, ports and canals and who is now sheltered in his height above the adjoining sidewalk. A few years ago it was for sale, and it was the most expensive home in Bilbao on a real estate portal on the Internet. History is not lacking.