It happened in Bilbao
One of the most industrialized cities in Spain, which had important energy production companies and good railway communications.
There they started their activity
the engineer Juan Urrutia and the businessman Fernando María de Ybarra. Both took their first steps in the sector of mining, but they soon concentrated their efforts on production and electricity distribution.
The world was changing
In the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution supported by 2 great inventions: the steam and electricity.
The outbreak of the First World War
meant a great shortage and an increase of the price of carbon. Electricity was beginning to gain ground. Still Their applications were being investigated and implemented, which would give shapes modern urban life: the telephone, the tram, the radio... But also urban lighting and the first traffic lights.
It was then that Ybarra and Urrutia,
together with other partners and with the support of banking entities, founded SICE based on an agreement to obtain the patents of the companies that manufactured the most advanced electrical technology leader of the moment: General Electric and Thomson-Houston.
And although the main objective
of SICE was to manufacture its own machinery, the global economic crisis of the time derived its first impulse towards facilities such as railway electrification and distribution of products manufactured by those companies.
At the end of the first year of life
SICE was already present in Madrid and Barcelona. And very few years later he installed the first traffic lights to regulate traffic.