Urban District of the Port

The earliest references to the Las Razas warehouses date back to 1924, when the Director of Engineering of the Board of Works, Delgado Brakenbury, mentioned the need to create a project to build storage warehouses in the streets next to the Tablada Wharf.

The blueprint for the distribution of the service area on the left side of the Alfonso XIII canal, drafted in December 1924 and approved by Royal Order on 5 January 1926, included the building of 5 starage warehouses parallel to the sheds of the Tablada Wharf, “erecting them in stages as required by the exploitation of the Port ” (Madrid Gazette nº 232, year 1927) According to this version, signed by the Sub-director of engineering, José Luis de Casso, the size of the planned warehouses would be 140 metres long by 55 metres wide. It was also planned that the side of the warehouses that face the docks would have a railway link, so the façades needed to be raised one meter above the line to enable goods to be loaded and unloaded directly to and from the wagons.

As regards the opposite ends of the warehouses, which faced onto the street (today, Avenida de Las Razas), they would be provided with large doors to allow lorries to enter the warehouses.

In 1927 the project was passed on to the bodies charged with organizing the Iberoamerican Exhibition of 29. Francisco José Sánchez Apellaniz, Secretary to the Exhibition Committee, took an interest in the warehouses and petitioned the Minister of Public Works, Rafael Benjumea y Burín, for these buildings -specifically the warehouses 4 and 5- to be built to house the infrastructure of the Exhibition.

The minister agreed and in the same year of 1927, with the Royal Order of 6 August, the building of commercial warehouses 4 and 5 was approved as a matter of urgency, as the original project had decreed, although some ornamental accessories were added, such as the pinnacles crowning the façade and the ceramic friezes that adorn the lintels of the doors that give onto the street.

The works were undertaken with a budget of around 1,200,000 pesetas. As mentioned above, warehouses 4 and 5 were built as “a matter of urgency” (as the building project specifies). The other warehouses (1, 2, 3, 6 and 7) with their respective buildings were built later, in stages, during the 20th century, following the same building style as the original two.

The works, which were carried out by the Board of Works, began in October 1927 and were officially opened in December 1928. This was the date when the Committee of the Iberoamerican Exhibition took provisional charge of them.

They were used as galleries for general use during the 1929 Exhibition. Once the Exhibition finished, the warehouses were returned for the use they were designed for (commercial warehouses) to the Board of Works.

In September 1930 the State Cotton Commission asked the Port of Seville for the provisional use of some of the warehouses for the imminent agricultural harvest, having failed to build its own storage facilities in time. In 1935 they were still being used provisionally.

In July 1936, warehouse number 5 was rented by the Banco Hispano Americano who then leased out part of the building to the Cod Fishing and Drying Company of San Sebastián, because there were cold storage areas with wells for its services. Warehouse 4 was subsequently leased as a deposit for oil. On 16 October 1936, the Military High Command of the 2nd Division requisitioned buildings 3 and 4 of the commercial warehouse number 5.

In 1937 building 2 was also taken over. Following the Civil War, in mid 1942, the directors of the Board of Works considered that enough time had passed, and requested that the warehouses be returned by the military authorities to the control of the Port of Seville - completely empty - or the military could continue to occupy them on the signing of a lease contrat with the Board of Works.

The Lieutenant Colonel of the Straits Region, Antonion Rueda, immediately answered that the warehouses should be returned. This order was fulfilled on 3 November 1942, fifteen days after receiving the letter. Since that date, the warehouses belong to their legitimate owner, the Board of Works (today, the Port Authority of Seville) where they continue to be used as spaces for the storage of goods.