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In the Mondragón valley, it all began with a school: in 1943, Father José María Arizmendiarrieta opened a vocational school with 21 pupils. Thirteen years later came Ulgor, the first industrial cooperative. Today MONDRAGON brings together more than 71,000 people and €11.3 billion in sales, and every cooperative pays at least 13% of its profit into a common fund. Nearby, Bilbao turned its post-industrial conversion into a textbook case. For leaders questioning their governance, their local roots or how value is shared, the Basque Country answers at the scale of a whole industry.
At Otalora, the group’s management centre, the cooperative outreach team explains how 71,415 people work in cooperatives run on a “one member, one vote” basis, and how solidarity between cooperatives carries them through crises. In 2025, the group invested €218 million in research and development.
Founded in 2009 by Mondragon Unibertsitatea and leading Basque chefs, the Basque Culinary Center in San Sebastián teaches gastronomic sciences and carries out food research. It also designs tailored training for company teams.
In 2025, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao welcomed more than 1.3 million visitors; it contributed €676.7 million to GDP and sustained 14,319 jobs. It became the symbol of a conversion led since 1992 by Bilbao Ría 2000, a public partnership devoted to transforming the metropolis.
Photo credits : David Vives, Aritz Vicarregui, Alex Caza, Hans-Jürgen Weinhardt (Pexels, Unsplash)
