I was encouraged by a museum to visit this nearby archaeological site, so there will inevitably be a few posts about it. This is what happens when museums make helpful suggestions. They create content for me, and I become powerless to resist.
One of the items on display was this door, which was once the entrance to the parish church of Saint John the Baptist of Sondika. The building was demolished in 1939 when they decided they’d construct Bilbao Airport and the church was one of the casualties of that which is I suppose sub-optimal from a heritage perspective.
One of the architects of the new airport was Manuel Ignacio Galíndez Zabala (1892-1980) who was a local man who had an interest in history. He was the man who rescued the door and he donated it to the Euskal Museum and in recent years it has been moved to the Heart of Mary Square site. The entire church might have been lost, but at least someone had the foresight to save the front door and I think it looks like it was well worth saving.
I did try and find which bit of the airport the church would have been under, but I can’t find any old Spanish maps with enough detail to achieve that.