Tuesday, June 3rd - On the way to Mondragon

We stopped off at a Laboral Kuxta credit union office in Bilbao this morning for a quick walk through. Language barrier aside, it looked like you would expect any credit union office to look like.  I didn't see dedicated messaging  about cooperative values, but those may be ingrained in the brand already.  More to learn about Caja Laboral.

MCC graciously provided passes to the Guggenheim Museo in Bilbao this morning.  The building wowed from the inside, as much and more as the trademark titanium exterior.  Gehry's sensitivity to the siting of the building, knitting it together with both the river and city was powerful.  The building has a simultaneously organic and engineered feel.  A Serra sculpture gallery (there's small scale Serra work at the Walker Art Center) was both a labyrinth and an echo chamber.  The main atrium was especially striking and cathedral like, but the entire museum was saturated with details.  The Yoko Ono exhibit on the third floor will satisfy Yoko Ono fans specifically.

Today included an informal tour of an Eroski Hypermarket to begin to answer "What is an Eroski Hypermarket, and how does it fit into the big picture?"  It's another type of cooperative animal.  It's roughly a Super Target + Iberico ham + affordable wine and beer + worker/member hybrid ownership.   Retail exceeds industrial in annual turnover at Mondragon.  Eroski is just part of the picture.  I thought there was surprisingly little attention paid to organic (Bio) prioritization.  The growth in the North American natural foods market and a trip I made to an EU organic trade fair in Nuremburg in 2006 have me hungry to know what strategies Eroski might be formulating.

(Photos googled.)