Ría de Bilbao

This guide to the Ria de Bilbao follows the estuary through the flood that drowned Bilbao's old town during its biggest festival night in August 1983, back through a century of industrial waste that had left the water officially declared ecologically dead, and into the city's 1991 decision to bet everything on this stretch of river. It traces the sewage overhauls, the factories pulled back from the banks, and the years spent dredging poisoned silt from the riverbed. Walk the promenade and picture the docks and stink that once lined this same water.