The second edition of the USEC Bilbao Congress will take place on September 20 and 21, 2023.
The congress and exhibition event, exclusive and unique for its transversal format, where professionals, policy makers and industry, from the Security, Emergency and Mobility sectors, share a space on a managerial scale, with power of decision and prescription, will be held at the Azkuna Zentroa, Center for Society and Contemporary Culture of the Biscayan capital.
After the success of the first edition, the plans of the USEC - Universal Security & Emergency Chanel - for this second edition are to make the Biscayan capital a fixed biennial venue and, in even years, to rotate its celebration to other cities.
The headquarters
The Azkuna Zentroa (Spanish translation: Centro Azkuna), formerly Alhóndiga Bilbao, is a former wine warehouse converted into a leisure and cultural center.
According to the project of the Bilbao architect Ricardo Bastida, it was built in the early 1900s, using innovative techniques from the structural point of view, becoming one of the first examples of public architecture in reinforced concrete.
After its renovation in May 2010, with the participation of designer Philippe Stark, it became a multipurpose civic center, with the mission to create connections between people and contemporary culture, to influence the context and contribute to the construction of a more creative, critical and diverse society.
It was in December 2014 when it was renamed the Iñaki Azkuna center, in recognition of the man who was mayor of Bilbao for more than 12 years, to finally end up with the official name of Azkuna Zentroa in March 2015.
The city
Bilbao is a fashionable city, friendly, avant-garde, well communicated and in continuous transformation.
A reference as a business, tourism and leisure destination. It is home to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and is connected by a modern international airport.
The town of Bilbao, founded in 1300 by Don Diego López de Haro, is located in the north of Spain and is the capital of the province and historical territory of Bizkaia. With nearly 350,000 inhabitants, it is the most populated city in the Basque Country and the head of the metropolitan area of Bilbao, a conurbation of more than 1,000,000 inhabitants that extends along the Nervion estuary.
On May 19, 2010, the city of Bilbao won the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize, considered the Nobel Prize for urban planning, awarded by the city-state of Singapore.
In 2012, its mayor, Iñaki Azkuna, received the World's Best Mayor Award, given every two years by the British foundation The City Mayors Foundation, in recognition of the urban transformation experienced by the Biscayan capital since the 1990s.
In 2017, Bilbao was voted Best European City 2018 at The Urbanism Awards 2018, which is awarded by the international organization The Academy of Urbanism.
The city has superb standards of cuisine and quality of life. It offers more than 4,000 rooms in modern three-, four- and five-star hotels, many of them located near the Euskalduna Conference Center.
