Zeraingo Udala - Ayuntamiento de Zerain

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TOURIST ATTRACTIONS > The Aizpea mines

Through a community effort and making communal decisions, we built and structured new houses for young people, municipal services, a comprehensive school and the cultural centre, among others. We should, however, note that the importance of these initiatives does not lie in their size, but rather in the active participation of the entire population.

The visitor can see remains from each era in which the mines were exploited: the Englishman's house, the powder room, the mechanic's house, the calcination furnaces and the convicts brought here to extract lead for making bullets, etc.

Nowadays, hardly anyone remembers the iron mining industry that played such an important role in the Basque Country's development. In Zerain, however, we have not forgotten this passage in our history, and we are delighted to have the opportunity of showing visitors an aspect of our past that, to a large extent, helped make us who we are today.

The Aizpea mines are currently the object of an extensive restoration project. Instead of shovels, pickaxes and convicts, they are now filled with cameras, video cameras and tourists from all over the world. These mines, which have played such a decisive role in the history of our town, will therefore continue to be a fundamental pillar of our future development.

History

The exploitation of iron ore has been a key activity in Zerain's Aizpea neighbourhood throughout history. The first references date back to the 12th century, and from that time until 1951, when the furnaces you can still see today were finally closed down, the iron mines were closely linked to the lives of Zerain's inhabitants.

The first references from the 12th century indicate that iron ore was originally processed in the open air using small furnaces.

During the 14th century, the iron extracted from the mines was processed in the Alto Urola and Alto Deba ironworks. In 1512, the Catholic Monarchs granted the Otalora family the right to exploit the mines, and the title to the mines remained in that family's hands for more than three centuries, until 1826.

The most recent references date back to the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. During this period, an English company (Cerain Iron Ore Company Limited) took over the running of the mines and built many of the structures and edifices that we can still see today. In 1932, the mines were taken over by a German company, and a few years later, in 1941, they became the property of Patricio Echeverría de Legazpia's plant, until their closure in 1951.

Extraction and processing

The first element that we find in the mountains around Zerain is iron carbonate, which was extracted from galleries tunnelled into the mountainside. Over a hundred of these galleries still survive today, the longest being the Santa Bárbara Gallery, which is over 600 metres in length.

The iron carbonate extracted from the galleries dug into the mountainside was transported to the furnaces by locomotives. The furnaces themselves were continuously filled with layers of coal and carbonate, which were then calcinated.

This process acted as the first iron carbonate wash, separating the carbonate, water and other substances and preparing the material for transportation to the ironworks.

The transport system used to this end was a 1,800-metre-long cable-based system known as the 'aerial tram'. The pails that hung from the cable were filled with calcinated iron and transported to the neighbouring town of Mutiloa. From there, the iron was taken to Ormaiztegi in special vehicles, before being transported to Pasaia where it was loaded onto boats bound for Scotland or Germany.

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