Artxanda viewpoint

This guide to the Artxanda viewpoint above Bilbao opens on a day during the Spanish Civil War siege of Bilbao, when shells hit the tracks of the funicular that carried the city's daily life up this hill. It rewinds two decades earlier to October 7, 1915, when crowds gathered to ride a brand-new funicular built by a Swiss company, selling nearly 2,800 tickets in a single afternoon. War and a 1976 cable accident kept shutting the line down for years at a time, long before it ever reached the platform where you're now standing.