John Adams was the second president of the United States and one of the founding fathers. In the late 1770s, Adams traveled to Europe to research constitutions that could serve as models for the American constitution. His travels brought him to Bilbao in the Basque Country of Spain. In his writings, Adams cited Bilbao and Biscay as having one of the most democratic forms of self-government in Europe at the time. He would have appreciated Bilbao's modern cosmopolitan culture and likely would have studied Spanish at the Hemingway Institute.