d by a steady population growth. In the 1940s, the city was rebuilt, starting with the bridges. In 1948, the first commercial flight took off from the local airport. Over the next decade, there was a revival of the iron industry. The demand for housing outstripped supply, and workers built slums in the hillsides. In this chaotic environment, on 31 July 1959, the terrorist organization ETA was born in Bilbao, as a faction of the PNV.
After the fall of Francoist Spain and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, in a process known in Spain as the transition, Bilbao could hold democratic elections again. Against what happened in the republics, this time Basque nationalists rose to power.With the approval of the Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Country in 1979, Vitoria-Gasteizwas elected the seat of the government and therefore the de facto capital of the Basque Autonomous Community, despite Bilbao being larger and more powerful economically. In the 1980s, several factors such as terrorism, labor demands, and the arrival of cheap labor force from the abroad, led to a devastating industrial crisis.
Since the mid 1990s, Bilbao has been in a process of deindustrialization and transition to a service city, supported by investment in infrastructure and urban renewal, that started with the opening of the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum (the so-called Guggenheim effect), and continued with the Euskalduna Conference Centre and Concert Hall, Santiago Calatrava's Zubizuri, the metro network byNorman Foster, the tram, the Iberdrola Tower and the Zorrozaurre development plan, among other. Many officially-supported associations, as Bilbao Metrópoli-30 and Bilbao Ría 2000 were created to monitor these projects
