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VASCONGADA SHIPPING COMPANY

Public Limited Company. The Compañía Naviera Vascongada was created in Bilbao in 1899, the result of the initiative of Félix de Abásolo y Zuazo, who was appointed manager and president of the company for life. Abásolo had long experience as a shipbroker and as manager of other shipping companies in Bilbao, such as the Sociedad Marítima de Vizcaya, and in this new company he had the financial support of shipowners and owners such as Fernando Carranza and, through him, the Banco de Comercio. The corporate purpose of this new public limited company was free European and transatlantic shipping with large steamships. The company was initially set up with a capital of 2.5 million pesetas, which was increased to 6.25 million pesetas a few months later to cover the investments made in the purchase of ships, in addition to the issue of mortgage bonds and several loans from the Banco de Comercio. At the beginning of 1901, it already had a fleet of nine ships totalling 23,420 gross registered tons, which made it the sixth largest shipping company in Spain in terms of registered tonnage, a position it held until the early 1940s. Although in the following decades it lost some positions, Compañía Naviera Vascongada remained until the early 1980s among the twenty largest Spanish shipping companies.

From its origins, Naviera Vascongada was characterised by using its fleet in a wide variety of trades, with different types of contracts. It was the first Spanish shipping company to enter the River Plate traffic, transporting cereals and other products from Argentina to Europe and returning with English coal, a market which it combined with the use of its ships in the free trade of cereals, minerals and coal in Europe. During World War I, the company expanded the size of its fleet through the purchase of ships and a company such as Marítima La Actividad. The high profits obtained during the war allowed it to distribute substantial dividends, replace the five ships lost during the conflict, renew the rest of its fleet and maintain reserves that enabled the company to weather the post-war crisis without too many problems. The renewal and expansion of its fleet continued throughout the 1920s: by 1932 it had eleven units with 35,691 gross tonnage.

The crisis in the maritime transport market, caused by the contraction of international trade, hit the company hard as it operated in international markets, especially the Río de la Plata, which were very open to competition. However, the new management (led by Alejandro Zubizarreta and Primitivo Ruiz, also directors of the company) quickly found substitute markets, less affected by the fall in prices, such as import and export traffic for the Soviet Union, a country with which Naviera Vascongada signed a time-charter contract for three of its ships in 1931. By 1932, the company had 33 percent of its fleet moored in Bilbao, a rate, however, lower than that of most Spanish shipping companies operating in free navigation. This was due to another constant feature of this company since its creation, the atic renewal of the fleet, replacing old steamers with new vessels. In addition, the shipping bonuses granted by the State and the abundant reserves accumulated from previous years allowed Naviera Vascongada to distribute dividends during all these years -except 1934-.

During the Civil War, Naviera Vascongada only had one of its ships at its disposal, the rest remained moored in English ports until the beginning of 1939, seized by the governments of the two sides in the conflict or lost (Armuru and Conde de Abásolo). During World War II, an increasing part of her fleet was dedicated to serve official traffics (mainly the import of cereals from Argentina) and the rest was leased on a long term basis to the Swiss Government. The loss of its steamers Banderas and Sabina in 1940 and 1941 left the company with only five units and 17,631 gross registered tons, half of the tonnage it had been operating in the early 1930s. The company made very high profits during the war years in Europe, but unlike after World War I, it could not use them to expand and renew its fleet due to the ban on importing ships and the disastrous state of the shipyards in Spain. Faced with this situation, the company opted to take over the ownership of other Bilbao shipyards. In October 1942, in a joint operation with Naviera Aznar, it set up Naviera Bilbaína. Six years later, also with the support of the Aznar family, Naviera Vascongada acquired Naviera Bachi and its subsidiaries Comercial Marítima de Transportes and Naviera Ibérica.

Naviera Vascongada's relations with the Aznar family and the shipping company of the same name, which began with the creation of Naviera Bilbaína, intensified after the death of its chairman, Primitivo Ruiz Martínez, in 1946. Alejandro Zubizarreta, who had previously been a ship inspector, manager and board member of Naviera Vascongada, was appointed its managing director and, in 1953, its chairman (both positions he also held at Naviera Bilbaína), when several members of the Aznar family also joined its Board of Directors. After Zubizarreta's death in 1963, the chairmanship of both companies fell to the leader of the Aznar group, Eduardo Aznar y Coste, and their management was taken over by Zubizarreta's nephews (and heirs), the brothers Ignacio and Eduardo Ibarrondo Frías, respectively.

From the 1950s onwards, Naviera Vascongada specialised in the transport of solid bulk cargoes (coal, cereals, wood, scrap metal, minerals, etc.), especially in cabotage and import traffic, markets protected and regulated by the State. The company began renewing its fleet from 1956 with new bulk-carriers ordered from different Spanish shipyards, although the bulk of the investments were made during the 1960s. The modernisation of the fleet was financed by increasing the company's share capital and, to an increasing extent, by recourse to ship loans granted by official and private banks. By 1973, the company had the largest fleet in its history: eleven ships with 180,598 deadweight tons. The economic crisis placed the company in a difficult financial situation, with high financial costs arising from the renewal process and with increasingly poor operating results due to the fall in demand and freight rates. In 1979 the company sold three of its vessels and ed a redundancy programme and a postponement of the payment of some maturities of the ship loan to the public banks. The situation did not improve during the 1980s: the company had to moor several of its vessels and, since 1986, had only two units in service. Finally, the company was dissolved in 1993.

Jesús Mª VALDALISO GAGO (2007)

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