The Alfonso XIII Bridge turns 100 and faces restoration as part of the Port Urban District

The Alfonso XIII Bridge, known in Seville as the Puente de Hierro (Iron Bridge), turned one hundred on 6 April 2026. It was opened in 1926—Alfonso XIII crossed it aboard the Argentine cruiser Buenos Aires—to a design by the engineer José Delgado Brackenbury, and was dismantled in 1998 as obsolete.

A centenary with a square, an exhibition and tours

The Port Authority marked the anniversary by inaugurating the “Puente de Alfonso XIII” square, with a bronze relief on the bridge’s original site, and with the exhibition “La obra que transformó el Puerto de Sevilla” (The work that transformed the Port of Seville). Alongside this it launched the “Puente Abierto” (Open Bridge) programme, with free guided micro-tours at weekends from March to June.

Restoration under way

In July 2025 the Port of Seville put out to tender the drafting of the bridge’s restoration project, with a base budget of €150,000 and an eight-month deadline, in collaboration with the Andalusian Institute of Historical Heritage and the University of Seville.

The bridge’s future remains open to debate: the Port Authority proposes restoring it as a viewpoint over the Guadalquivir, while thirteen community organisations are calling for it to be brought back as a working pedestrian crossing over the river.

In the masterplan drawn up by EDDEA, the structure is the centrepiece of the Teatro del Puente, the district’s cultural amphitheatre overlooking the water of the dock. As José María de Cárdenas argued back in 2021: “we have an iron giant here and we are working out how to bring out its value.”