The Bayonne Museum at the center of a complex territorial issue

France. In principle, when a city finds its art museum after years of closure and efforts to renovate it, it wants to share this good news with as many people as possible. But in Bayonne, no banners adorn the city and the municipality has not launched a national, or even local, communications campaign. Just an inauguration with a few officials and of course Laurence des Cars, the president and director of the Louvre with whom the museum maintains very close relationships.

This is because the electoral reserve period weighs on the opening festivities. Communication on the reopening of the museum being by definition unusual compared to what was done during the mandate, it must be very limited according to the texts. And the various right-wing mayor Jean-René Etchegaray, unofficial candidate for re-election, and whose involvement in the renovation of the museum everyone knows, fears above all the reaction of his opponents on the electoral legal ground.

On a political level the criticism is classic: “We could have renovated three schools instead of the museum”we hear. Of the 33 million (excluding tax) that the extension work, renovation of the building and restoration of the works cost, the City paid 14 million euros. An amount which seems reasonable for a city which has contained debt, an investment budget around 45-47 million euros and an operating budget – and therefore revenue – around 87 million euros.

Bayonne is a medium-sized city of 53,000 inhabitants, comparable to Laval, Albi, Niort or Narbonne. Its poverty rate (17%) is slightly higher than the national average, as is that of untaxed households (51%). But the impression that emerges from the historic center is rather that of a wealthy town with well-restored old buildings (the town is one of the first to have a protected sector) and active businesses.

The Basque issue: identity and territory

Bayonne is also and first of all the capital of the northern Basque Country (the south being in Spain), an essential dimension for understanding local issues. Here the Basque cultural identity is very strong but it has to deal with a large Gascon and Béarnaise population. However, the Bonnat-Helleu Museum is located in Petit Bayonne, a historic district of the City between the Adour and the Nive, today a stronghold of students but which was for a long time the meeting point between Basque nationalist activists and Spanish exiles. Some walls around the museum still display the figures of ETA members who have disappeared or are in prison. ETA terrorism is still recent, it was only in 2011 that the movement announced “the definitive cessation of armed activity”and it was only in 2017 that their disarmament was organized with an important role in the matter of the current mayor as his deputy for culture Yves Ulgade likes to point out. It is also in the Petit Bayonne that the Basque Museum has been installed since 1922, around the same time as the Bonnat Museum, which benefited from a major renovation in 2001.

The mayor is also the president of the Basque Country Urban Community (CAPB), an intercommunity which has succeeded in bringing together all the Basque municipalities, constituting a de facto counter-power to the department of Pyrénées-Atlantiques whose prefecture is Pau. Jean-René Etchegaray, who derives his moral authority from his role in the disarmament of ETA and his political authority in the presidency of the CAPB, assigned the mission to the director of the Bonnat-Helleu Museum “to open” the museum to rural Basque populations. A way for the mayor of Bayonne to facilitate his re-election by his peers as president of the “agglo”. A difficult objective to achieve and which requires the arrival of schools from the hinterland, a mediator hired especially for the rural public and of course cartels in Basque. Paradoxically, only Bayonne residents and not all CAPB residents will be able to benefit from free entry to the museum until December; There are already more than 10,000 who have requested their pass from the town hall.

An ambivalent relationship to tourism

What is the image of Bayonne in the rest of France? “ People spontaneously respond to the Bayonne festivals, ham and rugby”sighs Bouahlem Rekkas, the director of the Bayonne tourist office who would like to rely on the reopening of the museum to develop cultural tourism out of season. Because Bayonne has many assets to attract urban weekend tourists. Four hours from Paris by TGV, it offers the advantages of the region’s temperate climate, combined with a heritage city well equipped with cultural facilities. The hotel offer is still limited for this type of tourism (18 hotels in the town, including six 4-star hotels), but the situation is changing as evidenced by the recent opening of Villa Koegui opposite the museum, a welcoming luxury hotel. “We have several requests to create 3-star hotels,” confirms Yves Ulgade, the deputy mayor.

Problem: locals have an ambivalent relationship with tourism. The busy seaside resorts on the Atlantic coast (Biarritz, Saint-Jean-de-Luz) exert pressure on land as far as Bayonne. This is evidenced by several windows of Petit Bayonne which display flags claiming housing for the locals. The Bayonne festivals or the Ham Fair attract millions of visitors and comfortably support the local economy but “not too much is necessary”. We are still far from the overtourism of Barcelona and the exasperation of the people of Barcelona with regard to the revelers who come to disrupt the streets, but the Catalan capital acts as a foil. So for simplification, we put in the same bag those who want to party with its procession of nuisances and “slow tourism” who want to visit museums and enjoy the charm of the region.

However, the town hall will have to take a clearer position with regard to cultural tourism. The Bonnat-Helleu Museum has the potential to attract 100,000 visitors like the Fabre Museum in Montpellier which announces double attendance. For the moment its objectives are limited, 60,000 for the year 2026 of reopening and 40,000 for “landing”. Castres and Bayonne will celebrate the bicentenary of Goya’s death in 2028 with significant loans from the Louvre. A new opportunity to really party this time!