Begoñako Basilika

This guide to Begonako Basilika in Bilbao opens on the sixteenth of August 1942, when two grenades are thrown into a requiem mass crowded with mourners and a Carlist general worshipping among them. It follows the attacker's capture and the political shockwaves that ripple through Franco's government, alongside the basilica's own six-century climb up this hill, funded by ordinary Bilbao families rather than nobles. Listen for the Cavaille-Coll organ shipped in from Paris in 1884, tucked into the same naves the blast tore through.