Leaving home to launch into new places and people has always been a desire of human beings. Compelled by adversity or driven by the desire for knowledge and adventure, men and women of all ages have left their hometowns and joined migration flows that have led to rich cultural exchanges. Sometimes they settled and sometimes they returned loaded with new features and ideas to share.

Bizkaia has been a land of welcome, but also the starting point for the transmission of ideas, models and knowledge. This has generated a vast heritage, tangible and intangible, which is nothing but the reflection of the communities, of people who have created it and kept it alive. A cultural heritage linked to objects, architecture, visual arts, urbanism, but also to intangible expressions such as dance, sports, literature, music, language ... which, even today, express and transmit the basque cultural heritage.

From the first contacts between prehistoric people to the present projection of artists beyond the limits of Bizkaia, our heritage has resulted in cromlechs, convents and “majorats”, houses built by rich returned emigrants or “Indianos”, boats that sailed the seas and objects acquired in distant lands, songs and sounds of the ports left behind. All this was created by men and women away from home, a simple expression meaning so much: away from your background, your house your family.

This produces a multifaceted vision of culture, where the center moves from object to subject: the people that create and live their heritage day by day.  We will focus on the human dimension of our municipalities, towns and districts, their multidimensional heritage, which today faces the challenge of overcoming traditional views and to respond to a new, more complex global society.

Guided tours, lectures, exhibitions, demonstrations of crafts, fairs, gastronomy, cinema, historical representations, music, dance, sport ... different ways of creating, disseminating and enjoying our culture, expressing human mobility as a bridge, a way of cultural exchanges and communication between communities. Bizkaia is a good example of wealth formed thanks to human effort opening new channels to transmit culture and heritage.

EHDs IN BIZKAIA ORGANIZED BY THE DIPUTACIÓN FORAL DE BIZKAIA (BASQUE COUNTRY)

www.bizkaikoa.bizkaia.eus/JEP

bizkaikoa.oej@bizkaia.eus