Fury at plan to expand new Guggenheim into reserve

A large and almost comically sinister fish named Guggenheim is on the loose in and around the ancient Basque town of Guernica, its jaws perilously close to snapping shut on a twitchy-looking tiddler called Urdaibai.

- Sam Jones

Images of the predator and its prey have been proliferating on posters, bus stops and walls in the area since last summer as fears grow over what a suggested new outpost of the Guggenheim in Bilbao could mean for Guernica and the adjacent Urdaibai biosphere reserve.

Although the Guggenheim, which opened 27 years ago yesterday, has been an engine in Bilbao's shift from post-industrial decline to powerhouse of culture tourism, not everyone wants to see the experiment replicated.

Critics argue that the new museum, which would be spread across two sites - one in Guernica and one in Urdaibai - will ruin the 22,068-hectare (54,500-acre) natural reserve by bringing at least 140,000 visitors a year into the protected space.

Local groups and environmental organisations are calling for the project to be scrapped. It makes no sense, they say, to introduce such a large number of people into Urdaibai, which was declared a biosphere reserve by Unesco in 1984, and whose estuarine salt marshes and cliffs host both local wildlife and migrating birds.