About Bilbo Hiria

This is the website of Bilbo Hiria radio station (which means City of Bilbao in Basque). This is a nonprofit, noncommercial, community radio station in Bilbao promoted and run by Zenbat Gara Culture Association.

We broadcast (96.0 FM) to the metropolitan area of Bilbao, where an estimated number of 80.000 Basque speakers live. That is our specific target audience, as 100% of our spoken content is in Basque. Why? Because, despite Basque is a minoritized language in our urban area, Zenbat Gara is commited to dignify its use and promote its revitalisation.

We mainly focus on social and cultural issues on our program schedule, ranging from hourly news, magazines and talk shows to specific programs on sports, filmmaking, literature, new technologies, science, education, travel, Basque improvised verse making (bertsolaritza) and programs targeted at children and youth. As for music, we favor diversity and quality. Some of our programs are specialized on World Music, Reggae, Jazz, Classic, or Rock music, while some others are more eclectic.

We broadcast our live stream on the Internet (click on the speaker on the upper-right corner of the window) and also podcast all our shows so you can listen to them on demand on this website.

Besides Bilbo Hiria irratia, Zenbat Gara works on some other areas such as teaching basque language to adults or organizing cultural activities at our Kafe Antzokia, a cultural center and venue in Bilbao. You can learn more in English about Zenbat Gara’s work from these sources:

-The dossier Zenbat Gara presented at the Linguapax World Congress on Language Policies organized by UNESCO.

–Report by Jackeline Urla (PDF format). Kafe Antzokia: The Global meets the Local in Basque Cultural Politics Jacqueline Urla. Department of Anthropology. University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. Oct. 2003.