The estuary is progress; in the deep riverbed, the
the silver thread meanders,
and the beating of the heart of the world
carries each tide to San Antón.
José del Río Sáinz Pick (1884-1964)
The Bilbao Estuary, with its current calm, almost melancholic flow, with its banks, today without boats, and the huge degraded lots on its banks, has been, however, witness for more than a century, of a very intense human activity. Until not so long ago, the 14 kilometers that separate the town from the mouth of the Nervión were a hive of industrial activity: blast furnaces with long, smoky smokestacks, shipyards from whose slipways the largest fleet in the state sailed, metallurgical, chemical and electrical industries… A time when ships sailed up to the very heart of Bilbao, sailing under bridges or crossing others that opened ceremoniously in their path. Chronologically and approximately, we can place this process of take-off, development and decadence between 1875 and the first years of the current millennium.
A century of struggle against the sea
The presence of a navigable waterway close to the mining basins, in a geographical location relatively well connected by sea with the most industrialized areas of Europe, invited the location of industries. However, traffic on this waterway was not easy at first.
The port, historically located within Bilbao itself, forced ships to travel the distance between the Abra and the center of the town. It was a complicated route, which forced to save meanders, sandbanks or mud and, in particular, the dreaded “bar of Portugalete”, a tongue of sand that formed just at the mouth and that was, over the centuries, the cause of countless shipwrecks in the low tides.
To combat these difficulties, the Port Works Board was formed in 1877. This organism would have a fundamental role in the planning and execution of the works of conditioning of the estuary and the construction of the future outer port of Bilbao. The first major work it undertook was the construction, between 1877 and 1897, of the Portugalete Iron Wharf, the work of the engineer Evaristo de Churruca, which would make it possible to eliminate, once and for all, the aforementioned bar.
Other key milestones in this long process of conquering the environment were the construction of the Santurtzi dock and its Algorta counter-dock in 1908 and the opening of the Deusto Canal in 1968 (its recent enlargement has turned what used to be the Zorrotzaurre “peninsula” into an island). Finally, the construction of the Punta Lucero dock, executed between 1977 and 1986, culminated the process of transferring the port from the city of Bilbao to the mouth of the estuary, in what we know as “El Abra”.
The industries of the estuary
As we have already seen in previous entries, the wealth of iron ore and its large-scale extraction are at the origin of the great industrial take-off of Bizkaia. The natural outlet to the European markets was through the estuary, so the first structures that marked it had to do with the transport of ore: mining railroads brought the ore to the loading docks that the mining companies built on the left bank of the river. The step of transforming the ore locally, instead of exporting it raw, came very soon after, and thus the blast furnaces arose, which, in turn, stimulated the development of activities that would serve as an outlet for its production, such as shipbuilding and the metallurgy of iron transformation. Other sectors with a strong presence on the banks of the Nervión have been the electrical and chemical industries.
Shipbuilding
Shipbuilding has had a special importance in the construction of Bilbao’s identity.
As could not be otherwise, Bizkaia very quickly adapted the use of iron to shipbuilding, to such an extent that, by 1910, 47% of the ships in the whole of Spain were registered in Bilbao.
The first modern shipyards were linked to the construction of warships for the Navy. This was the origin of Astilleros del Nervión (1889), born to build and launch three cruisers to form part of the navy. This was followed in the following years by other large shipyards, such as Euskalduna, in 1900, La Sociedad Española de Construcción Naval, (La Naval), in 1915 or Astilleros del Cadagua. Alongside these, there were more modest builders, such as Celaya or Ruiz de Velasco, the latter located on the right bank of the Ría.
What remains
The change of economic model forced by the crisis of the traditional sectors brought about the closure and abandonment of large manufacturing facilities and their adaptation for new uses. In the best of cases, the site of the old factories has been used for the construction of new facilities, usually of a cultural nature. This is the case of the Guggenheim or Marítimo de la Ría museums or the Bilbao conference center (called Euskalduna in memory of the old shipyard of that name). In a similar vein, the industrial banks of the estuary, with its old docks, docks, cargo warehouses, towpaths, ore loading docks, etc., have been converted into pleasant green walks for the enjoyment of locals and foreign tourists. Good examples are the Uribitarte and Olabeaga promenades.
It is the new Bilbao that has been reborn from the ashes of the old one.
In other cases, less fortunate, the old industrial wrecks have not yet found a new use, and today they are nothing more than huge and degraded lots where ghostly ruins still stand. This has been the sad fate, if nothing changes, of spaces such as the one occupied by Astilleros del Cadagua, the entire Zorrotza and Burtzeña riverside and, for a few years now, the entire sector occupied by La Naval de Sestao, the last large shipyard to succumb.
There has been a lack of sensitivity and imagination to find a new development model that respects and incorporates the memory of the past. Almost nothing is left standing, except for a few miraculously saved elements that must be protected and preserved. Nothing more recommendable than a stroll along the estuary, between Bilbao and the Abra, to get to know them. As milestones on this unique route, the Deusto Bridge (designed to open up and let ships pass over the estuary to the City Hall area), the imposing Molinos Vascos building in Zorrotza, the remains of the ore loading bays around the Rontegui Bridge, the Ilgner building and the Alto nº 1 furnace, preserved from what was the colossus of Altos Hornos, and the docks and abandoned buildings of La Naval, in Sestao, are worth mentioning. Arriving at the mouth, the old Portugalete Iron Bridge, the work of Evaristo de Churruca, and the Vizcaya Bridge, or Hanging Bridge, built in 1892 to join Portugalete and Las Arenas (Getxo), both take us back to the moment of greatest splendor of the iron industry.