SEPI Sociedad Estatal de Participaciones Industriales

• After more than a decade closed to religious services due to serious structural problems, this jewel of the pure Andalusian Gothic will reopen its doors next July 23rd

Thanks to the use of a pioneering restoration technique, the Church of Santiago el Real y de Refugio in Jerez de la Frontera (Cadiz) will resume its functions starting next month.

Grupo TRAGSA has been in charge of the restoration works carried out in the church, which have made possible to guarantee and consolidate its structure through the injection of mixtures of different stabilizing compounds, and of restoring the rest of the building, with the highest respect of the original construction.

The Church of Santiago, which presents a special value and which has been declared as an Andalusian Cultural Heritage Site, has thus become the first to be consolidated from the pinnacles to the floor, going through the whole structure. This constitutes a landmark which has been acknowledged by the international scientific community.

Mr. Emilio Yanes, the architect in charge of the project, has guaranteed that this work has been carried out taking into account very demanding safety levels and comprehensive technical building norms.

At an event which took place at the Jerez Bishopric, the regional delegate of Grupo TRAGSA, Mr. Sebastián García, highlighted the 'extremely complex challenge” which they set for themselves two and a half years ago when they took over the works 'for preventing the collapse of the church because there was an imminent danger of its doing so'.

TRAGSA and Grupo SEPI

Grupo TRAGSA is part of Grupo SEPI, a corporate holding which includes a total of 16 state-owned companies in which it has direct, majority shareholding participations, with a workforce of around 73,000 professionals in 2014; the Spanish state-owned television and radio corporation, Corporación Radiotelevisión Española, which is attached to SEPI, and one public foundation. Equally, SEPI has direct minority shareholdings in a further ten companies, and indirect shareholdings in more than one hundred companies.