Before the term “digital audio” existed and long before there was talk of Madrid as the capital of podcasting in Spanish, in what is now the neighborhood of Las Letras there was a different crackle: the sound of logs sawing in the Serrería Belga (Belgian Sawmill). The building that now houses Estación Podcast, the most important Ibero-American festival of sound creation, was a century ago a modern wood factory coming directly from the forests of the Peñalara massif.
It all began in 1840, when a group of Belgian businessmen decided to take advantage of the disentailment of Mendizábal. They founded the Sociedad Belga de Fincas Españolas, which acquired 2054 hectares of pine forest in Cabeza de Hierro, in the Sierra de Guadarrama, land then belonging to the monastery of Santa María de El Paular. Not only did they cut timber there: the company applied pioneering forestry management, cutting selectively and without razing the forest.
From the pine forests of El Paular (which would come to be called the Pinares de los Belgas), the wood traveled in carts to Madrid, where the company bought some land near the Puerta de Atocha.
A historic sawmill turned museum
There they installed their headquarters and a workshop that would eventually become, in 1925, the Serrería Belga as we know it today. The architect Manuel Álvarez Naya designed an industrial building that today is a rarity in the heart of downtown: reinforced concrete structure, exposed pillars, large windows and almost 4000 square meters of floor space. Today, it is part of the “Landscape of Light“, the UNESCO heritage site that includes the Paseo del Prado and El Retiro.
For decades, the Serrería Belga processed wood coming from Rascafría and other intermediate points such as Villalba or La Cabrera. It closed in the 1970s and passed to the City Hall in 2000, which commissioned its rehabilitation to Langarita-Navarro. In 2013 it became the headquarters of Medialab-Prado, until they moved it to Matadero. Today, under the name of Espacio Cultural Serrería Belga, it aims to remain the heart of something that, already under the management of El Prado, was very much alive.
It is also a sound space
From May 21 to 24, this place will be the epicenter of Estación Podcast, a festival that brings to Madrid the most recognizable (and listened to) voices of the Ibero-American world. Its halls will host podcasts such as Hoy en El País, Un tema al día (from elDiario.es), Gente muerta by Maya Pixelskaya, Gastropolítica by Maxi Guerra, Mochila al pasado, Watif, Sabor a Queer, La mujer maravillosa, La sobremesa or Eternamente jóvenes. There will be humor, culture, science, politics, true crime and even bicycles, thanks to Fred’s cycling obsession.
Admission is free and you only have to download invitations from the festival’s website, which is also held at Espacio CentroCentro. You can check the program at this link.