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Dustin Luca
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SALEM, MASS. – The Spanish Basque city of Bilbao is today best known as the site of Paul Gehry’s landmark Guggenheim Museum, but it was once practically a “sister city” to the ports of Salem Sound thanks to its role as Europe’s biggest importer of New England salt cod.
Such surprising historical connections will be front and center at a symposium held this Saturday, titled “To Drive a Great Trade for Bilbao: Rediscovering New England’s Iberian Ties, 1640s-c.1830.” The event is hosted by Salem State University in partnership with Marblehead Museum and will run from 1:30 to 5:30 pm on Salem State’s Harrington campus.
Local and Spanish curators and historians will come together with area residents to explore how trade in cod once nurtured a network of relationships between North Shore seaports and Iberian port cities. That included an especially strong Bilbao connection, which helped open the door to Spanish support for the armed resistance to British rule in 1775.
The symposium is taking place in conjunction with Marblehead Museum’s new special exhibition Bilbao Bound, now on view at the museum (170 Washington St., Marblehead) through Dec. 24.
The symposium will be held in the Petrowski Room of Marsh Hall, on Salem State’s Harrington Campus. For the full program and to register for the event, please visit bit.ly/3L2v6Hl (remote attendees register at bit.ly/47gkNIu).
These offerings are part of an initiative to recover the history and legacies of New England’s Iberian ties bringing together the Marblehead Museum, the Itsasmuseum Bilbao, and the Salem State History Department. It’s made possible by Iberdrola and Avangrid, the Society of Colonial Wars in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the General Society of Colonial Wars, American Ancestors, the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, the España Chapter, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution and the Fundación Consejo España-EE.UU, the Salem State University History Department, and generous private donations.