• Cementos Uriarte y Zubimendi, S.A., warehouse.

Visible remains: entire building

Constructive features: this building has two floors, apart from the attic and basement. The basement is made of squared rubble masonry, the rest of the walls, of random rubble, excepting the brickwork body jutting out of the main façade. Dual pitch roof, gable-shaped main façade. Built on the project drawn by the engineer Laureano de Azpiazu on 25th November 1926.

 

By the time Zumaia specialized in the export of hydraulic cements, infrastructure improvement works were at their zenith, in Spain as well as abroad. Consequently, cement production became the economic engine of the town. This industry became so influent for the town and the activity of its port that it was officially entitled “Port of General Interest (Second-Degree)” by Royal Decree on 8th June 1883.

The manufacturers from the low Urola valley realised that, individually, they were not likely to satisfy the increasing demand of natural cement; thus, they undertook different kinds of cooperative initiatives. Some of these intended to answer to a concrete demand from the market, some other aimed at larger trading actions. In 1888, they founded the Sindicato de Cementos rápidos de Zumaya (in Spanish: Syndicate of Fast Setting Cements of Zumaia), rebuilt in 1915. On 31st December 1922, a new company was founded, Cementos de Zumaya, S.A., which formalized once and for all the commercial union of several cement-producing firms (Corta y Compañía; Cementos Uriarte y Zubimendi, S.A.; Juan Alberdi -formerly Gracián Alberdi- and Cementos de Zumaya y Electricidad, S.A. -formerly Echeverría, Castillo y Compañía-).

From 1928 on, the headquarters of Cementos de Zumaya, S.A. occupied the former warehouse of Cementos Uriarte y Zubimendi, S.A., located at the port.