Sestao

Sestao is a municipality in the province of Bizkaia in the Basque Country, situated on the left bank of the Nervión estuary between Baracaldo and Portugalete. Like its neighbours, Sestao was built on the iron and steel industry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with foundries and metal-working plants lining the riverside until the industrial decline of the 1980s and 1990s.

The Vizcaya Bridge (Puente Colgante), a UNESCO World Heritage Site completed in 1893, is visible from Sestao’s waterfront, spanning the Nervión between Portugalete and Getxo downstream. This transporter bridge, the oldest of its type in the world, carries a gondola across the river rather than vehicles on a conventional deck.

The Camino del Norte passes through Sestao on the final left-bank urban stretch before Portugalete and the estuary crossing.