31

The recent history of the Spanish Basque Country (Euskadi Autonomous Community) shows the adaptation of an economy based on types of activity –?mining, heavy industry–? and of commercial regulation (protectionism) condemned in the late 1970s to European integration and globalization. Taking advantage of European integration while at the same time of its own long industrial tradition, supported by the collective effort of the various institutional (the Basque government obviously but also the State) and economic (industrialists, trade unions and above all the powerful regional and savings banks) actors, the region specialized in service for high technology for industrial companies while the Bilbao port manifested its renewed ambitions at the level of transnational macro-regions.