Astano Forever in Our Memory

The Current Situation at Endesa

Juan Laguarda 107

EOI Ferrol

Número 19 ANO 2021

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C1.2

A year after a special feature on Endesa’s

shutdown war written by C1 students at EOI As

Pontes, we have asked one of them, a power

plant employee, to sum up what has happended

since then. This is what he wrote.

Lorries blocking the entrance to the power plant (photograph by Pilar Polo)

After numerous protests and demands by ancillary workers, coal carriers and local government, a technical negotiating table was created to find a solution to the problem. The parties involved are the central government’s Ecological Transition Ministry, Xunta de Galicia’s autonomous government, As Pontes local government, Endesa, labor unions and representatives of the groups affected by the shutdown.

Not only is the main entrance blocked (photograph by Pilar Polo)

According to a report presented by Endesa, power plant operation with biofuels is not feasible, neither from an environmental nor an economic point of view. Nevertheless, a report presented by the other parties asserts that not only is feasible, but necessary and convenient.

Indeed, the conflict has turned into a hot potato for governments of different political wings, and neither want to handle it. This is the reason for them to support the idea of biofuels. Now, the ball is in Endesa’s court.

Questions are being asked about the company’s attitude towards energy transition (photograph by Pilar Polo).

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108

EOI Ferrol Número 19 ANO 2021

Laura Sardiña Feal

Astano Forever in Our Memory

B1 English

Birth, life and death of a shipyard in the Galician coastline

This is a little history of a shipyard that even the strict Japan of the 70s fell in love with.

Astano was born on 15th October 1941. Everybody knows that Mr. José Luis González-Llanos y Caruncho was the founder and first director of this shipyard but, what people do not know is that on 15th October 1941, González-Llanos and fifteen other partners signed the birth of Astano. All these members were neighbours of Fene, Narón and Ferrol.

The company began with a capital of 12,020 EUR or two million pesetas. Remember that we are in 1941.

The pictures show some of the murals that can be seen in San Valentín, the neighbourhood built for the workers of Astano.

The beginning was awful, because they did not have tools, machinery, a drawing office, and so on. Spain was leaving the civil war behind, but they had the most important thing, enthusiasm and desire to build something important for the region.

The first staff of the shipyard was composed of twenty-eight workers, distributed in the following way: X Two bosses of the first degree X Two teachers of the first degree X Two teachers of the second degree X Two draftsmen X Twelve senior office managers X Eight junior office managers

From 1941 to 1969, Astano constructed eighty-two ships (fishing boats, passenger ships, tuna fishing and cod fishing vessels, etc.). These ships were all made of wood. However, in 1943, Astano constructed the first steel ships, named Tabeirones I and II, whose hulls were made of clinched steel.

The next year, in 1944, Astano became a public limited company, which meant the multiplication of its capital and a huge increase in its staff. In 1952, Astano had 1,225 workers and in 1972 it had 6,000 workers. In general, everything increased, its infrastructure as well. Its tools were better and its premises grew immensely: from the original 3,000 m2, to 755,000 m2.

Then, the golden years arrived in the 60’s and 70’s,

when the best tank ship, named Arteaga, was built and launched on 15th April 1972. In fact, this launch was in the news all around the world. As a result, people from different countries came here to see the launch of the vessel, some as mere spectators, and others, for example, some Japanese people, to see if this ship would break in two parts. They could not believe that

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a 347.94-metre-long and 32-metre-deep ship, with a 53.57-metre beam, could support the structural load that a ship suffers at its launch. However, these Japanese people were not taking into account the fact that, leading that launch, was the best engineer in structural calculations, Mr José Deus López (chief calculation engineer), who later became the manager of Astano.

On 15th April 1972, the Arteaga emerged triumphant, generating a wave that flooded the nearby bridge of As Pías, and that day the history of a giant builder of giant ships, with incredible infrastructures never seen in Europe before, began.

In that time, Astano had two 337-metre-long bleachers, two dry docks, 2,700-metre-long armament docks, 18 cranes between 10 and 100 tons of lifting force and an 800-ton Goliath gantry crane.

This strong increase in capital, workers and infrastructure shows the path of Astano since its foundation, and to which, in 1944, the Pastor group became part of its management. Astano entered, this way, a time of construction of large units, so these projects would lead it to rival the great shipyards in the world. However, in this period, serious problems began in the company. These problems were dangerous for Banco Pastor, which forced Astano to land in the National Institute of Industry (INI), which took control of 60% of the capital. The bank was saved, but the problems for the shipyard were getting serious. All good things come to an end.

This is how Astano began the 80’s fighting to survive. Due to financial problems and political decisions, its working force dropped from 6,000 workers to 1,000 in the year 2000.

However, it can be argued that the company has been successful, especially with regard to FPSO units (high-tech units that combine a large crude storage capacity with extraction). In such a context, Astano, which in a few years delivered five large units - Petrojarl Foinaven (1996), Texaco Captain (1996), Discoverer Enterprise (1998), Discoverer Spirit (1999) and Discoverer Deep Seas (2000) - maintained a permanent effort of improvement in quality and management that allowed it to remain competitive worldwide in search of a new workload for its staff.

But two problems turned up. The first one: on 13th January 1998, the Discoverer Enterprise, pushed by strong winds, broke moorings in the shipyard and went against the bridge of As Pías. And the second problem,