Match Bilbao Bizkaia 2026

Privacy policy

Last updated: 21 September 2026

In short: several different things happen under the name Match Bilbao Bizkaia, and they are worth telling apart. This website has no forms, no accounts and no analytics: it asks you for nothing and records nothing about you. The event platform, at meetmaps.com, is where you register, build your profile and arrange your meetings — and that is where personal data is actually processed. And the newsletter is subscribed to on its provider's own form, which is a third place again. This page covers all three, and says which is which throughout.

1. Who is the data controller?

Bilbao Ekintza, E.P.E.L.
Calle Navarra 5, 48001 Bilbao, Spain
Tax identification number Q-4800731-D
+34 944 205 300

Data Protection Officer: datuak@bilbao.eus

Enquiries about the event: welcome@matchbilbaobizkaia.eus

Bilbao Ekintza is the controller for both the website and the event platform. The platform is operated by a supplier acting as a processor on its behalf, as described in section 10.

2. Three places, and what happens in each

Everything in this policy belongs to one of three places. Which one it is changes what is collected, who can see it and how long it is kept, so each section below says plainly which one it is talking about.

  • This website (matchbilbaobizkaia.eus) — the public pages: the programme, the destination, the exhibitor directory and the brochures. Nothing is collected here.
  • The event platform (meetmaps.com) — registration, your professional profile, your availability, the meeting requests and your agenda. This is where personal data is processed, and it is a different website with its own terms of use, reached by pressing Login or Register.
  • The newsletter — the professional newsletter of the destination, which is not part of the event. The Contact section asks only which of the two audiences you belong to, and sends you to the subscription form of the provider that runs the mailing. Your email address is given there, not here.

3. This website

It does not collect anything. These pages are static. There is no contact form, no subscription form, no login and no analytics or audience measurement of any kind. No cookies are set, nothing is written to your browser's local or session storage, and nothing is sent to us as you read.

The pages are also served without contacting anyone else in order to display themselves: the typefaces, the images and the styles all come from this site. Content from other services is loaded only if you ask for it — the video player when you press play, a brochure when you open one — and the cookie policy lists which ones and what that means.

As with any website, the server that delivers these pages keeps technical access logs — IP address, date and time, page requested, browser and operating system — for the security and correct operation of the site. Those logs are not used to build any profile or to identify visitors.

The one thing this website publishes is the exhibitor directory: the business details of the companies taking part as exhibitors — company name, category, logo and professional contact details. That is the purpose of the directory and the reason exhibitors register. Those details reach this site from the platform. Participants registered as buyers, media or any other profile are never published here, and neither are photographs of individuals: the directory shows companies, not people.

4. The newsletter

The Contact section of this site offers the professional newsletter of the Bilbao Bizkaia destination. It is not part of the event: it is a mailing about the destination's activities, programmes and services, and you can subscribe to it whether or not you come to Match Bilbao Bizkaia.

This website does not ask you for anything in order to subscribe. It asks which of the two audiences you are — Basque supplier, or international trade and media — and each button opens the subscription form of the provider that runs the mailing, on that provider's own site. Your email address is typed there, and your consent is recorded there, along with the information that provider gives you at that moment.

  • Purpose: managing the subscription and sending information about activities, programmes, services, events and initiatives of the destination.
  • Legal basis: your consent (Art. 6.1.a GDPR), which you may withdraw at any time using the unsubscribe link in every message, without affecting what was sent beforehand.
  • Retention: until you ask to be removed.

[Insert the name of the newsletter provider, its role as processor, and whether it transfers data outside the European Economic Area and under which safeguard of Chapter V GDPR]

5. The event platform: what your data is used for

When you register for Match Bilbao Bizkaia you create a profile on the event platform. The data you enter there is used for the following purposes, all of them part of running the event:

  • Registration and participation. Managing your registration, your profile as a participant and your taking part in the event.
  • Accreditation and attendance. Issuing your accreditation and managing access to the venues and sessions of the programme.
  • Meetings and professional activities. Organising the pre-scheduled B2B meetings, the workshop and the rest of the professional programme, including your availability and your agenda.
  • Networking and matching. Suggesting and enabling contact between participants whose profiles and interests fit, which is the purpose of the event.
  • Your professional profile. Building and keeping up to date the profile that describes your company, your markets and what you are looking for.
  • Visibility to other participants. Showing part of your profile to the other people registered for the event, so they can decide whom to ask to meet. Section 6 says which part.
  • Communications about the event. Writing to you about the organisation and running of the event: confirmations, changes to the programme, practical information and your meeting schedule.

If data is ever to be used for a different purpose, the person concerned will be informed beforehand.

6. What other participants can see

An event whose point is to put people in touch only works if participants can see something of each other. What they see is limited to what the platform is configured to show:

[Insert which fields of a participant's profile are visible to other participants, and which data the platform uses to suggest matches, once the configuration of the platform is fixed]

Contact details are exchanged when a meeting is confirmed, not before. Nothing in this section is published on the open web: it is visible to people registered for this edition of the event, inside the platform.

7. Legal basis

  • Performance of a task carried out in the public interest (Art. 6.1.e GDPR), for running the services, programmes and activities of Bilbao Ekintza, including this event, and for handling enquiries.
  • Performance of a contract or pre-contractual measures (Art. 6.1.b GDPR), for managing your registration and your participation once you have asked to take part.
  • Consent (Art. 6.1.a GDPR), for the newsletter — see section 4 — and for anything the platform presents to you as optional.

Consent may be withdrawn at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing carried out beforehand.

8. Categories of data

  • Identification data (name and surname)
  • Contact data (email address, telephone)
  • Professional data (company, position, markets, interests)
  • Data generated by taking part: availability, meeting requests, confirmed agenda and attendance
  • Data relating to any enquiry you send us
  • The email address given on the newsletter provider's form
  • Browsing data, limited to the server's technical access logs

9. How long we keep it

Personal data is kept for as long as is necessary for the purpose for which it was collected. It may then be held blocked for the periods established by law, in order to meet legal obligations and to address any liability that may arise.

Exhibitor details are published in the directory on this website for the edition of the event they registered for.

Newsletter data is kept until the subscriber asks to be removed, which every message carries a link to do.

[Insert the retention period for the data held on the event platform, and what happens to it after the event, as set out in the processing agreement with the platform provider]

10. Who receives your data

As a general rule, data is not disclosed to third parties, except where required by law. Suppliers that provide services to Bilbao Ekintza may have access to personal data acting as processors, under the contract required by Article 28 GDPR, and may only process it on Bilbao Ekintza's instructions.

The event platform. Match Bilbao Bizkaia runs on Meetmaps, operated by Meetmaps, S.L. In respect of the data processed for this event, Meetmaps acts as a processor on behalf of Bilbao Ekintza, under a data processing agreement concluded in accordance with Article 28.3 GDPR.

[Insert the sub-processors the platform provider relies on — hosting, email delivery and any other — as listed in the Article 28.3 agreement]

The newsletter provider receives the email address you give it on its own form, and handles the mailing as a processor on behalf of Bilbao Ekintza. It receives nothing from this website: the address never passes through here.

Other participants see the part of your profile described in section 6. They are not recipients in the sense of suppliers: they are the other people at a professional meeting point, and that visibility is what you registered for.

11. International transfers

This website makes none. It loads nothing from outside in order to display itself — not the typefaces, not the styles, not the images. If you press play on a video or open a brochure, the service that provides it receives the technical data any internet request carries, your IP address among it; the cookie policy names those services and explains it in detail. Nothing else is contacted while you browse: there is no advertising network, no social media pixel and no analytics service on this site.

[Insert whether the event platform and the newsletter provider transfer data outside the European Economic Area — including through their sub-processors — and, if so, the safeguard under Chapter V GDPR that covers each]

12. Your rights

  • Access to your personal data
  • Rectification of inaccurate data
  • Erasure, where among other reasons the data is no longer necessary
  • Restriction of processing
  • Objection to processing
  • Data portability
  • Not to be subject to automated decisions, where applicable

To exercise these rights, write to datuak@bilbao.eus, or to Bilbao Ekintza at the address above, stating which right you wish to exercise and proving your identity. This applies to data held on the event platform as well: Bilbao Ekintza is the controller, and will pass the request on to the provider where it needs to act on it.

You may also lodge a complaint with the Basque Data Protection Authority — www.avpd.eus.

13. Security

Bilbao Ekintza adopts the technical and organisational measures necessary to guarantee the security of personal data and to prevent its alteration, loss, unauthorised processing or unauthorised access, taking into account the state of the art, the nature of the data and the risks to which it is exposed. The same is required of the platform provider under the processing agreement.

14. Changes to this policy

Bilbao Ekintza reserves the right to amend this privacy policy to reflect changes in legislation, case law or sector practice, and to reflect changes in how this website and the event platform work. Any change will be announced on this page, and the date of the last update is shown at the top.

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