El Pedroso Iron Factory

El Pedroso Iron Factory was built in 1817 and was the first iron and steel factory in the Iberian Peninsula. Located in the Sierra Norte in Seville, in the municipality of El Pedroso, it is one of the great historical symbols of the beginning of the Second Spanish Industrial Revolution. It produced iron for iconic constructions such as the Triana Bridge in Seville (Isabel II Bridge) and the railings of the Royal Tobacco Factory of Seville, as well as several cranes in the Port of Seville, and other buildings.

Inside the factory there were workshops, iron and steel installations, shelters for 500 workers and their families, schools, a hydraulic power station and traction engines (steam tractors without rails) used to put the wagons on rails and pull heavy machinery. This factory was built to use the iron ore in the area (Cerro del Hierro, located in San Nicolás del Puerto, Rosalino, Monteagudo, Juan Teniente mines, mainly) but, as it was expensive to transport fuel from the coal basin in Villanueva del Rio, 31 km away, the business wasn't successful. It filed for bankruptcy protection in 1888 and the factory stopped in 1895. From 1901 to 1907, the foundry and mines were taken over by Sota and Aznar, from Vizcaya, and later on they changed hands – nationals and foreign owners managed to keep it running with ups and downs, until the thirties. The last feeble attempt to restart the factory was made between the years 1957-1968, and then it closed for good.

El Pedroso Iron Factory is currently abandoned, but its facilities have great symbolic, poetic and evocative potential. A place with a strong identity that can now be visited through the Sierra Norte Tourism Office (El Pedroso).

The factory premises are being taken over by nature, creating a new landscape, a complex relationship between man and space, a struggle to return to its original pre-industrial form.