Finally, our commercial Bilbao is an open city. Being a mercantile nucleus from the outset, Bilbao has always been a city of hospitality.

Traditionally engaged in overseas trade via the El Abra Port, and today open to the world via the symbolic dove of the airport terminal designed by Calatrava, its development as commercial heart of Greater Bilbao, with which it has generated an urban continuum of one million consumers, has been simultaneous with the creation of a broad and fluid network of surface transport--both road and rail--that converges at the heart of the city in a swift and convenient manner, with central stations and parking lots.

Today this connection has been modernized with the addition of the subway network designed by Norman Foster. A new artery of activity and life that ensures accessibility to, and mobility within, the commercial heart of metropolitan Bilbao; and that with its aesthetic qualities and its functionality constitutes a new symbol of this Bilbao, open to the visitor, the tourist, the inhabitant, and notably the end customer, who plays a leading role in the business of the city.