Река Нервион: История и Возрождение

the district of Seville

Nervión (neɾˈβjon; ) is a river that runs through the town of Bilbao, Spain into the Cantabrian Sea (Bay of Biscay). Its lowermost course, downstream of its confluence with the Ibaizabal River, is known as the Estuary of Bilbao.

Despite its current popularity in Spanish, the traditional name of the stretch between the estuary and Basauri, where the Ibaizabal and Nervión merge, is Ibaizabal (meaning 'wide river' in Basque), according to historical evidence traced from the eleventh century up to the twentieth. Charles Frederick Henningsen, who travelled across the Basque Country during the First Carlist War, calls the river in Bilbao the Ibaizabal. The literary writer from Bilbao Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) as well as former mayor of Bilbao Javier Ybarra (1913–1977) refer to it as the Ibaizabal. Geological and hydrological data also seem to support this assumption.

Since ancient times, the Orduña pass that links Spain's inner plateau with the Nervión valley has had a great economic impact. During the Middle Ages it served as a natural border between the Biscay lordship and Castile counties, and tolls were collected there. Through the centuries, the Nervión valley was a vital communication corridor for Biscay, and the main rail line from Bilbao to the rest of Spain was constructed following the river in 1870. At the same time, Bilbao developed great commercial activity, with its seaport being the most important on the north coast of Spain. The port's activity relied totally on the navigability of the river in its final Engineer Evaristo Churruca developed an enormous project that would solve the traditional navigation problems of the river. The estuary divided the population of Greater Bilbao; the Left Bank was occupied by factories (steel, smelting and shipbuilding) and their workers, the Right Bank was a residential area for the factory owners. Now that the River Nervión has lost economic importance, the navigable part of the river is being abandoned in favour of the sea port, to allow urban development to take place on the banks of the river after the withdrawal of heavy industry. The quality of the water has improved through sanitization projects on the river and the disappearance of the most polluting industries.

After a century of intense industrial activity the river, especially the final , was ecologically dead with oxygen levels 20 percent below the norm. This made the Nervión one of the most polluted rivers in the world. In 1990 the local authorities launched a plan to overcome this situation, resulting in a constant improvement of the environmental status that after 15 years has transformed the Nervión in to a clean river, full of aquatic life.