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World Heritage

Declaration as "World Heritage" 2006 - 2007.

1st Prize of this kind awarded in Euskadi and 1st in the Spanish State as "Industrial Architecture of the 19th century."

UNESCO granted this recognition to the Vizcaya Hanging Bridge based on the following 2 criteria: First, considering that the bridge "is a spectacular and aesthetically pleasing addition to the estuary of the river and an exceptional expression of technical creativity, reflecting a completely satisfactory relationship between form and function." In other words, it is a remarkable work that perfectly combines beauty, aesthetics, and functionality. UNESCO also considered that the Hanging Bridge, "through the development of the ferry mechanism and its fusion of iron technology with the use of new steel cables, created a new form of construction that influenced bridge development worldwide in the following three decades and exported technologies from France and Spain." Thus, UNESCO wanted to highlight the innovative character of the Bridge from a technological standpoint and its status as a pioneer in this type of construction. On February 24th, the Honorable Mrs. Carmen Calvo Poyato, Minister of Culture, presented the Bridge with the CERTIFICATE ACCREDITING THE INCLUSION OF THE VIZCAYA BRIDGE IN THE LIST OF UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITES. The declaration of the Bridge as "World Heritage" has been registered in the Property Registry of Portugalete since May 23rd, 2007.

The declaration

Thanks to the investments made and private initiative, on July 13, 2006, in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee declared the Bizkaia Bridge a World Heritage Site based on the following criteria:

Considering that the Bridge is a spectacular and aesthetically pleasing addition to the estuary of the river and an exceptional expression of technical creativity, reflecting a completely satisfactory relationship between form and function. In other words, it is a remarkable work that perfectly combines beauty, aesthetics, and functionality.

Through the development of the ferry mechanism and its fusion of iron technology with the use of new steel cables, it created a new form of construction that influenced the development of bridges worldwide.

First World Heritage Site of the Basque Country.

With this recognition, the Bizkaia Bridge becomes the First World Heritage Site of the Basque Country, as well as the First Industrial Heritage recognized in Spain.

The World Heritage program aims to catalog, preserve, and promote sites of exceptional cultural or natural importance for the common heritage of humanity. As of the current date, there are 851 sites declared as World Heritage Sites worldwide, forty-one of which are in Spain.

The declaration of the Bridge as a World Heritage Site has been registered since May 23, 2007, along with the exploitation concession, in the Property Registry of Portugalete.

UNIVERSAL INHERITANCE

The Vizcaya Hanging Bridge is one of the most outstanding constructions from the European Industrial Revolution and of iron architecture. Its monumental structure of metallic lattice and steel cables represents one of the best successes of late 19th century engineering and marvellous innovation in the known means of transport.

The Vizcaya Hanging Bridge synthesises the new technological advances in iron architecture and railways at its time in order to create an original, beautiful, harmonious invention capable of solving the transport requirements and adapted to a location with difficult orography and with complex naval shipping problems.

This bridge, assembly in 1893, totally representative of certain materials and with a unique technique and aesthetics from the past, has always been in a perfect state of repair and has never stopped functioning and still performs its initial objective with extraordinary efficiency. Its exceptional universal value also derives from being the first hanging shuttle bridge constructed in the world and has been used as the direct model or source of inspiration for many other bridges with similar characteristics in Africa, Europe and America, and is still the best conserved out of all of them. It is a pioneering means of transport in its conception and its long useful life has maintained its efficiency right up to the present day.

The culmination of a long cultural tradition.

The Vizcaya Hanging Bridge also represents the high point of a long cultural tradition linked to the preparation and use of iron from Vizcaya. Iron has been intensively exploited since Roman times and throughout history has made a significant contribution to the growth of all of the European Atlantic countries and played a decisive role in the development of agriculture, mining and industry in Spanish colonial America.

The Vizcaya Hanging Bridge is situated next to one of Europe’s most important historical iron deposits, from which over 50 million cubic metres of mineral have been extracted and which was at its highest output at the time the Bridge was being built. Since the 13th century iron from these mines was exported in abundance to the markets of France, England and Holland and in the 16th century over 300 hydraulic iron works in the Basque Country distributed their metal products pretty much without competition not only in Spain and European markets, but to all of the new Spanish colonies in the American continent.

The symbol of iron culture.

Up until the 18th century all of America was colonised with axes, ploughs and picks forged with Basque iron as throughout the Spanish overseas territories it was prohibited to build forges. In the middle of the 19th century the new production and exchange technique of the Industrial Revolution made the export and transformation of the iron mineral a main motor behind Basque economic development and at the mouth of the Ibaizabal river was born an extraordinary industrial landscape of iron works, ship builders, railway works, mines and port harbours, amongst which the Vizcaya Hanging Bridge stood out from the beginning as its main symbol and the most ambitious representative of the renewed iron culture. Apart from its symbolism and historical representativeness, its construction characteristics, its size and its proportions converted it into a beautiful and unique reference image throughout the region. Furthermore, its aesthetic force and its importance as transport infrastructure has meant that it has had a notable influence on the entire urban setting.
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