Basque Government and Provincial Councils Sign Pact for Sustainable Tourism
The agreement aims to strengthen coordination and collaboration among administrations to foster an ethical and balanced tourism model in Euskadi.
By Leire Bengoa Iturriaga
••3 min read
IA
Generic image of the Basque Government building facade.
The Basque Government and the provincial councils of Álava, Bizkaia, and Gipuzkoa have signed an institutional pact to reinforce coordination and collaboration among administrations and consolidate an ethical, balanced, and sustainable tourism model.
The agreement, named “Pacto por el Turismo sostenible”, seeks to enhance inter-institutional coordination and collaboration to consolidate Euskadi's tourism model, based on sustainability, coexistence, and territorial balance.
The Minister of Tourism, Commerce and Consumption, Javier Hurtado, highlighted that Euskadi has been "developing and consolidating a sustainable tourism model for over a decade, based on territorial balance, tourism ethics, sustainability, and strategies for de-seasonality and flow management."
According to Hurtado, Euskadi has managed to position itself "at the forefront of tourism strategies" thanks to an internationally recognized model supported by the Code of Ethics for Tourism, to which more than 800 companies have already adhered.
The Minister further assured that "in Euskadi, we govern tourism and do not look away," and emphasized that 2026 represents "a turning point for our tourism model" with the implementation of three major tools: the future Tourism Law, the tourist stay tax, and the new institutional pact signed today.
The agreement signed today focuses particularly on institutional coordination, tourism promotion, and data-driven tourism intelligence. The four institutions will work together to optimize resources and tools, and improve the analysis of visitor profiles and behavior through observatories and tourism data platforms.
Furthermore, the pact includes strengthening collaboration in areas such as the creation of tourism products, innovation, digital transformation, and awareness-raising on social, economic, and environmental sustainability.
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"Álava and Euskadi are clear about where we want to go: to consolidate ourselves as a quality, sustainable, and accessible tourist destination, with a complete offering for all types of travelers. In that sense, the Pact we sign today is another step on this path: a formal commitment to continue and deepen our collaboration."
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"This pact reflects a way of understanding public management that we share: collaborative, results-oriented, and committed to a tourism model that generates wealth and employment in the territory and for its inhabitants."
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"From Bizkaia, we understand that tourism is not built alone. It is built from strategic alignment between institutions, from mutual trust, and from genuine shared governance, based on co-responsibility and joint decision-making."
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"This Pact for Sustainable Tourism is precisely that: a mature expression of cooperation that consolidates a model of institutional governance in Euskadi."
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"In Gipuzkoa, we have been working for some time towards sustainable, responsible tourism aligned with the values we share as a society."
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"Last year, we took a decisive step with the launch of the Strategic Tourism Plan “Come and Take Care of Us”. Now, we are taking another step in the Gipuzkoa Tourism Observatory, incorporating the framework panel for tourism competitiveness and new indicators to measure strategic challenges such as de-seasonality and de-localization. All of this is to move from mere data collection to knowledge generation."
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"All this effort responds to a very simple idea: to continue promoting and consolidating a strong, sustainable, and competitive tourism sector in all regions of Gipuzkoa, generating more stable and higher-quality jobs, throughout the year and across all of Gipuzkoa."
