Gernika-Lumo on foot

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Gernika. Photo: EiTB

Gernika-Lumo has memory, but it is also full of life. If you can visit it on Monday, immerse yourself in the smells, colours and sounds of its week market, the most important one of those celebrated in Bizkaia.

We start our walk in the Gernika-Lumo’s Market. The agriculture products of this area are sold every week here, since the town foundation. Besides, there are special fairs in October, cattle fair on the first Monday and an agricultural fair on the popular “Gernika’s last Monday”.

Taking the Andra Mari street we will arrive at the Fueros square, a urban collection formed by the Town Council and in front of it, the building of the old court, seat of the Peace Museum nowadays. The young museum reminds Gernika’s bombing but, above all, it tries to move to thought and to spread the “culture of peace”. Its slogan is “Renounce to forget, renounce to violence”. In the middle of the square, you can greet the don Tello count monument, who founded the town around 1366.

Taking the stairs on the other side of the square, you will reach the high area of the town. On the right, Saint Mary church. Time reflects its eventful building. Its building started in the 15th Century, in a Gothic style and it ended in the 18th Century with Renaissance aesthetics. Both trends live together in this church with a unique organ.

Behind the church, the Alegria palace, which houses the Euskal Herria Museum and the beautiful Europe Countries park. Walking in this small park is a delight for the senses. Besides breathing the greenness of nature you have to come closer to two big sculptures in open air “Gure aitaren etxea” (“our father’s house”) by Eduardo Chillida and “Large figure in a shelter” by Henry Moore. The four Basque ecosystems beechwood, oakwood, holm-oak wood and the riverside vegetation) are represented in this park that was inaugurated twelve years ago. A pool and, of course, Chillida’s and Moore’s sculptures complete its attractiveness.

From the park you will see the landscaped area of the Assembly House, plenary hall of the General Assemblies of Bizkaia. It was built in the 19th Century as a church, the Bizkaia Juntas Generales de Bizkaia surrounded by territory’s lords portrait. In an adjacent room a glass window covering all the roof stands out.

Close to it, the Gernika Tree under which the Assemblies took part in former times and where the municipal charter or the own laws of the Bizkaia dominion were pledged allegiance to. In fact, three Gernika’s trees can be seen: part of the trunk of the primitive oak tree, the actual tree, planted in 1860, and the sprout that will follow it.