A metalworking and steelmaking limited company founded in 1920 with a capital of 8 million pesetas by Federico Echevarr a Rotaeche. In reality, the company had a much earlier origin, although under other corporate forms. Its origins can be traced back to 1878. That year, Federico Echevarr a, together with his father, José Echevarr a Azcoaga, and his younger brother, José, bought the Recalde farmhouse and its land, located on a slope near the Basilica of Bego a; and after selling the lower part of said land to the Municipal Gas Factory and acquiring other adjoining land (owned by his brother-in-law Juan de Zuricalday and other relatives of his wife, and by Eduardo Victoria de Lecea), the family began the construction of a modest tin rolling and stamping workshop, later expanded to manufacture boilermaking and galvanized tubs.
Around 1885, Federico and José Echevarrà Rotaeche, partners in the company Echevarrà Hermanos, took over the industrial business of their father (who died in 1896). But very soon, Federico Echevarrà began to undertake new projects. Thus, together with Juan de Zuricalday, he bought, on behalf of Echevarrà Hermanos, new land and, after an extension of the Recalde factory, began in 1886 the mechanical manufacture of horseshoe nails, which he marketed throughout the world. In 1894, as owner of the Recalde factory, he signed a technical collaboration contract with Frederick Siemens that allowed him to install the first Siemens steel furnace assembled in Spain, as well as several rolling mills.
In 1901, faced with the inadequacy of the Recalde facilities (at that time, a total of 22,590 m , with seven warehouses and more than a dozen buildings) to house his projects, Federico Echevarr a acquired the Santa Ana wire factory in Castrejana, with a blast furnace and wire drawing sections, which he connected to the Recalde factory via a railway branch; and the Santa Agueda Iron and Foundry Factory, a tack factory, next to the previous one. In them he expanded the steel complex started by his father, setting up a mechanical workshop for the construction and repair of machinery.
Following the death of his wife in 1902, he formed the limited partnership Federico Echevarr ae Hijos, incorporated in 1903, with Federico Echevarr a (who contributed his industrial assets) and his two eldest sons (Juan and Luis) as general partners, and his eight remaining children as limited partners. The company, formed by the merger of various Echevarr a factories (with 230 workers in Recalde and 83 in Castrejana in 1902), reached an annual production of 2,500 tonnes of steel.
The company Federico Echevarrae Hijos was transformed into Sociedad Anónima Echevarra in 1920. The new company began the manufacture of fine and special steels, which soon appeared on the market under the name HEVA, which it had been testing since 1915. From then on, the company enjoyed a few years of moderate prosperity: its profitability (the percentage of its tax profits over the total paid-up capital plus its reserves) grew, 4% and 8%, in the second half of the 1920s, similar to what happened in Vizcaya for most companies in the sector; and the number of its workers rose from approximately 780 in 1920 to 1,300 in 1930. The investments made in the mid-1920s would enable it to relatively quickly overcome the crisis it experienced 1929 and 1931.
In addition to its factories in Begoña and Castrejana, Echevarría leased a steel blast furnace to Santa Ana de Bolueta for thirty years after the Civil War.
The Bego plant was constantly expanded since the Civil War along the land adjacent to the old Mallona cemetery.
The proximity to the city centre of Bilbao and the lack of space made it necessary, in 1963, to begin its move to other land. The chosen location was Basauri, where it moved its facilities while installing new ovens in the new plant. This factory began to operate in 1967.
With the intense crisis suffered by the steel sector in the seventies, the Echevarrà company moved into the public sector, joining Acenor in 1988, together with Aceros de Llodio, P. Orbegozo, Olarra and Forjas Alavesas. Two years later, Acenor merged again with Forjas y Aceros de Reinosa, the two main Spanish manufacturers of special steels, into Sidenor, although their activity was fully integrated in 1994. The following year, in 1995, the group was privatised, and the old Echevarrà plant in Basauri was integrated into the group. In 2000, the company started up a new steelworks.
The site of the old Echevarría factory in Begoña remained unused during the 1980s, until it was acquired in 1989 by Bilbao City Council for use as a public park, where a chimney remains as evidence of its former industrial use.
Eduardo ALONSO OLEA (2007)