Martin-Siemens Steel Furnaces (Ricardo Gómez Gimeno, arround 1950. Oil on canvas. 46 x 55 cm.)
text by Amaia Barrena García
He is observing the heat. This is his job, profession, and sustenance, looking at burning iron and knowing when it is ready as if he was calculating the exact time avocado ripens. He works with the sweat of his forehead, the sweat of his shirt, and the sweat that falls down his face as tears. He is looking at a marmite, so magical; next to it, Obelix’s would seem simple furniture. Progress boils in the pot he works with. Live conditions spark, need burns, and wealth leaves blisters, but not on the hands of those who touch it. The man looks at it and gets distracted, counting the moulds left on the floor, waiting to be filled with the mineral fire they are made for. From this point of view, they look like lost pen lids, ice cream moulds without a fridge, and containers without content. Wood and sheet mix under the sky of braded cables and hooks the size of a dinosaur that fish newborn steel. The machinery is as heavy as the sorrow. The big ships that face angry seas and lead to victory, the shy radiators that some lucky families can afford, clogs of impossible gears and even slag are cooked in this pot of boiling energy. The figures of various workers, like ants in the belly of an enormous metallic robot, can be seen meters away. There is no crane to lift their spirit, thinks the man with the thermometer, a minute before the burning steel reaches its highest point.
