Since the beginning of 2018, the Foundry has functioned as a self-organized residency and event space. But the space that houses this project has over five centuries of history before that. Before the Foundry was the Foundry, it produced iron; one still finds lumps of slag scattered throughout the field, remnants of a preindustrial process of iron reduction in a bloomery furnace. The name Foundry is misleading; in foundries, iron is cast, but in la Ferrería de Bravos, it was extracted from iron ore and later – probably from around 1600 – also worked with a hydraulic hammer. The site first appears in a so-called amparo real from 1478, the birth-year of the Inquisition – a document in which king Ferdinand supports Fernando de Pomariño and Gonçalo Peres de Bravos in their claim to being the lawful owners of the Bravos ferrerías (the king uses the plural, indicating an ensemble with more than one furnace).
Apparently the Bravos ironworks was occupied or under threat of occupation; this letter is basically the 15th century equivalent of a modern-day eviction notice, although the circumstances of the occupation remain unclear. Ten years before, Galicia had been hit by an uprising, the Irmandiño Wars, in which a peasantry exhausted by plagues, bad harvests and abuses of power rejected the rule of the local nobility, proclaiming that “no tengamos sobre nos señor ni fortaleza ningunga” (we accept no lord nor fortress over us). Between 1467 and 1469 the Irmandiños destroyed some 130 forts, before being squashed by the armies of Pedro Madruga (who according to one theory later changed his name to Christopher Columbus and sailed to America). A medieval tower or fort-like structure existed on the site of the Foundry as well, and it survived the uprising. In later literature this tower is referred to as Torre de Ferreira de Bravos, although this name may be of later provenance than the tower or fort itself.1
With scarce archaeological leads and inconclusive textual evidence, it is hard to ascertain what kind of iron-producing structure existed here in the 1400s. While the earliest evidence of water-powered bloomeries in Asturias and Galicia goes back to the late 1500s,2 it seems an early version of these installations existed in the Basque Country since the 13th century.3 Perhaps some renegade entrepreneur had brought the technology to Bravos a century before its traces first appear in the region’s historical record – although considering the apparent jealousy with which the Basques guarded their knowledge and the non-Basque names of the 1478 owners, this seems highly unlikely. A more probable story is that the Bravos installation was a prehydraulic system, a type of structure that had existed since the beginnings of the Iron Age around 1200 BC and that, despite the scarcity of archaeological sites, must have been common in this region throughout the Middle Ages. Assuming this to be the case, the only astounding fact is that the place was named after this relatively simple structure, and that the King took an interest in what happened here.
Before the arrival of hydraulic installations, iron had been produced in so-called ferrerías de monte, or mountain bloomeries. These used the same process of direct reduction, but on a much smaller scale, producing a few dozen kilos of iron with each firing, as opposed to the hundreds of kilos produced by water-powered furnaces. Most ferrerías de monte were relatively small and low-cost structures that, if the need arose, could be abandoned for a similar structure in a more opportune setting, leaving no architectural traces behind.4 With the spread of less itinerant hydraulic installations in the 17th century, this technology was abandoned. In most cases, all that remains of these antique structures are the slag heaps they left behind – and as slag was recycled in later blast furnaces, often not even that. Archaeological and historiographical literature are generally in agreement that little is known about their location, ownership, and dates of operation. While we can be sure that they existed in medieval Spain, they occupy a blind spot in the history of metallurgy.
There is one important exception to this: in the Basque Country, archaeologists have recently unearthed the remains of a number of large prehydraulic bloomeries.5 Because so far these have only been found in the Basque Country, they are called “basque furnaces” (horno vasco). These structures distinguish themselves by their enormous size: they were round, often 4 meters high and 3 to 4 meters in diameter. The typical horno vasco is pear-shaped, much like the later blast furnace, and it was often built on a slope, with a canal allowing wind to blow into the fire from below and slag to run out. Remains of these furnaces have been carbon-dated to the High Middle Ages (between the 10th and the 14th century), after which hydraulic technology was introduced in the Basque region. While information about prehydraulic bloomeries is scant, oral histories and logistical considerations suggest that the two technologies coexisted for some time. Orue-Etxebarria Urkitza speculates that hydraulic technology was initially only applied to the mazos working iron into shape, not the furnaces smelting it; it wasn’t until the second half of the 16th century that water power was used to drive the bellows supplying oxygen to the bloomery’s fire, completing the hydraulic ferrerías that were passed down to posterity.6
In a historical overview of ironworks in the north-west of Spain, the ferrería de Bravos is one of only four Galician ferrerías that were operating in the 15th century – there is no data for preceding centuries.7 It is unlikely that we will ever learn how iron was first produced here, but whatever the nebulous origins of the Ferrería de Bravos, what is sure is that as early as 1478, iron was produced here on a scale that warranted royal intervention. The king offered his protection to the owners of the ferrería, but these were often not the people who actually operated it: in 1551 a certain Pedro de Carnoza had rented the facilities, agreeing to supply some 600 kilos of iron to the market of Viveiro.8 By then, the real owners of the ferrería were probably the Cora family, Gonzalo Pérez de Cora (presumably a descendant of the Gonçalo Peres de Bravos from the 1478 letter) first figuring as the owner in an archival source from 1600.9 In 1610, this same Gonzalo Pérez de Cora would end up in a conflict with the mayor and neighbors of Bravos due to his refusal to pay local taxes. At some point, the medieval tower was lost to a fire, and in 1640, Gonzalo’s son Pedro Fernández de Cora built a small chapel on the site.10
The Coras would be in charge of the ferrería for centuries, producing iron, exacting tribute from the surrounding farmlands and inhabiting the pazo (manorhouse). It is unclear in which year the Ferrería de Bravos received a technological update, but the continued production of iron into the 17th century, as well as the now barely visible remains of a canal that once drove the mazo, indicate that at some point a water-powered factory replaced the more primitive installations of the 15th century. The site was perfect for a hydraulic bloomery: surrounded by forest and a river, with an iron mine nearby (although like other northwestern iron factories the Bravos ironworks generally imported the superior Basque ore), and not too far from the port town of Viveiro, the Ferrería de Bravos had access to the three resources these installations required (ore, wood, and flowing water) and was located in a strategic position for national and international trade.
While Galicia had plenty of water and good access to iron ore, the inevitable problem of wood scarcity became an issue here as well. In 1614, the chief magistrate of Viveiro punished two local charcoal burners for cutting down more than 200 oaks to make charcoal for the Bravos bloomery – oaks that would have made fine construction material. In 1640, a dozen neighbors from Ourol and San Pantaleón accused Pedro Fernández de Cora (the owner) and Juanes de Beldorrayn (a leaseholder of Basque provenance) of having destroyed their forests to make charcoal for the furnaces.11
It was probably for lack of firewood that the Ferrería de Bravos was forced to shut down in the first half of the 18th century. In the answers supplied to the catastro de Ensenada (a large-scale census conducted by the Crown of Castile) by Bravos in 1753, we read that the town has an iron factory owned by Francisco Jerónimo de Cora, but that this installation has not worked in over 30 years.12 This situation would change soon, however: in 1758 the installations were leased to Juan de la Vega y Río for 20 quintales of iron per year (the exact quantity depending on which quintal is used, this amounts to around one thousand kilos). During this period of activity the ferrería also produced metal parts for the Ferrol arsenal, which had developed into a major military establishment in the 1740s, in large part under the direction of the same Ensenada that organized the aforementioned census.
However lucrative this activity may have been for owners and leaseholders, three decades were enough to ruin the forest once again, and in 1788 the Bravos ironworks was once more forced to extinguish its fires and shut down production. Opposing Ibañez’s plans for the Sargadelos factory, a 1788 legal appeal refers to Bravos to illustrate the unsustainability of the iron industry: the forest had been depleted and the factory now lay abandoned, its neighbors in urgent need of firewood.13 Antonio Raimundo Ibañez would take up this debate, blaming deforestation on the excesses of an industry that proceeds without a well-considered forestry policy and framing the downfall of the Ferrería de Bravos as an example of ‘mala política de monte.’
The hydraulic hammer of the Ferrería de Bravos would not strike again. In 1808, Napoleon had forced the abdication of King Carlos IV and installed his brother, Joseph-Napoléon Bonaparte, on the Spanish throne. Most of the Spanish population rejected French rule, and a bloody war ensued. On January 28, 1809, forty-seven dragoons arrived in Viveiro (about ten kilometers north of Bravos), led by another four hundred infantry soldiers two weeks later. According to Spanish sources, the French soldiers terrorized the local population with acts of violence and destruction and demanded an oath of obedience to the legitimate ruler of Spain, Joseph-Napoléon Bonaparte. Armed with sickles, axes and a few rifles, some five thousand locals marched to Viveiro where they succeeded in preventing the oath ceremony.14
It is likely that the ferrería de Bravos was severely damaged in the French-Spanish war, and while we may never know exactly what occupied the site of the Foundry before (though we can be sure it was not an actual iron-casting foundry), we know that the same Cora family rebuilt it in the 19th century. One source claims that the manorial house that now forms the center of the Foundry was built on the site of the old ironworks.15 At this time, the Coras were a military family, supplying a number of captains to the Spanish Navy. Captain Pedro Fernández de Cora was the first to be buried in the family chapel, where he still lies today.
Another Cora buried there was Isidro de Cora y Cadórniga, who served as a commander in Puerto Rico but died of pneumonia in 1877 while visiting his family in Galicia.16 After the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), Teresa de Cora, the last doña of the ferrería, was afraid the maquis (Republicans who took up guerrilla activity after losing the war to Franco) would attack her, and asked for a group of guardias civiles to be stationed there. The site served as a military outpost in 1948, leaving several architectural traces including an improvised holding cell.
Teresa would be the last Cora to live in Bravos; shortly after she died in the 1970s, the ferrería was abandoned. A stone engraving of the family’s coat of arms (figuring an eagle, a lion, a tree, and a castle) still adorns the entrance to the chapel.
In the 1960s, the remaining slag was shipped off to feed the furnaces of the ENSIDESA steel plant. Today, virtually no trace of the traditional iron-producing installations remains.
1 Manuel Vázquez Seijas, ‘Torre de Ferreira o Ferrería de Bravos,’ in Fortalezas de Lugo y su Provincia; Notas Arqueológicas, históricas y genealógicas (Lugo: Imprenta de la Excma. Diputación, 1973), pp. 63-65.
2 Quintana López, La Labranza y Transformación Artesanal del Hierro, Book I, pp. 50-51.
3 Xabier Orue-Etxebarria et al., ‘The Basque Bloomery Furnace ‘Horno Vasco’: New Findings of a Large Iron Smelting Furnace and Historical Perspective,’ in De Re Metallica, Vol. 25 (2015), pp. 11-26: 12.
4 Rafael Uriarte Ayo, ‘Minería y empresa siderúrgica en la economía vizcaína preindustrial (s. XVI-XVIII),’ in Urkitza et al., Historia del hierro en Bizkaia y su entorno, pp. 233-268: 244.
5 Urkitza et al., ‘The Basque Bloomery Furnace “Horno Vasco.”’
6 Urkitza, ‘El “Horno Vasco” de reducción de mineral de hierro,’ p. 187.
7 Balboa de Paz, ‘Ferrerias y Machucos en el Noroeste de Espana,’ pp. 320-21.
8 Luis López Pombo, Municipio de Ourol; Un recorrido por sus parroquias (Lugo: Diputación Provincial de Lugo, 1995), p. 138.
9 José Antonio Balboa de Paz, La Siderurgia Tradicional en el Noroeste de España (Siglos XVI – XIX) (Astorga: CSED, 2015), p. 218.
10 Seijas, ‘Torre de Ferreira o Ferrería de Bravos,’ pp. 64-65.
11 López Pombo, Municipio de Ourol, p. 138.
12 Answers to the Ensenada enquiry are available online: http://pares.mcu.es/Catastro/ (consulted October 2024).
13 Pardo, Documentos, p. 104.
14 Seijas, ‘Torre de Ferreira o Ferrería de Bravos,’ pp. 64-65.
15 López Pombo, Municipio de Ourol, p. 138.
16 Santiago F. Pardo de Cela, ‘La familia de don Daniel de Cora y Cardóniga’ (sic.), in Heraldo de Viveiro, April 3, 1992.