The Udondo Bridge is located over the mouth of the rivers Udondo and Gobela, in the Nervión Sound, as it flows through Leioa on the road from Las Arenas to Bilbao. It was installed in 1876 to replace another bridge that was destroyed during the war.
It is necessary to cross the road to reach some stone steps that lead to the lower part of the bridge. We can clearly see the cast-iron beams that support it from here.
And, if we look in the same direction as the Sound, we can see the enormous cranes that are still in operation, bearing witness to the area’s industrial past and present.
A bridge with history
History begins in Bilbao with the construction of the Isabel II Bridge – or Arenal Bridge – which began in mid-1845 following a project undertaken by Antonio de Goikoechea.
It was officially opened in 1848, although the work was completed a few months later. The bridge consisted of three minor arches over the banks and spanned the riverbed by means of a central drawbridge section and four equal 11-metre-long arches made of cast iron or poured iron.
The bridge was one of the first major works the Santa Ana de Bolueta factory carried out, as all its metal sections were cast in Bilbao by this pioneering and long-lived iron and steel company.
The bombardment of 2 April 1874 and the floods of day 11 severely damaged it, and it was replaced by a newly built one.
Meanwhile, the bridge over the mouth of the River Udondo in Leioa had also been blown up during the siege of the town and the chief engineer of public works in Bizkaia, Pascual Landa, aware of the demolition of the Isabel II bridge, proposed the acquisition of the blades of one of the arches for the reconstruction of the Udondo bridge.
It has been standing in its current location for almost 150 years and was rediscovered in 2006 by the researcher Joaquín Cárcamo.
The oldest cast-iron bridge
It is the oldest surviving cast-iron bridge in Spain, along with the Triana Bridge, also known as the Isabel II Bridge, which until then was considered the only cast-iron bridge in Spain.
