Uploaded on 2017-08-19 by Jorge Otaegi

This photo was taken by me a few years ago, in the construction process of an extension for Zuloaga School, in San Sebastian. It shows a worker installing the zinc roofing. Nor the Basque Country nor Spain extract any large amount of zinc; the top 3 producers are China, Peru and Australia. [see this 2012 summary by the US Geological Survey: (https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/zinc/mcs-2012-zinc.pdf)]. Thus, zinc is part of a modern globalised construction industry. Behind the worker, in the photo, you can see some typical buildings in San Sebastian, dating from the second half of the 19th century. The façades are built with Igueldo (a near quarry) sandstone, the local stone. In fact, the wole city centre is built with this material, and the very Zuloaga School is too (although cannot be seen in the image). This local stone shows construction used to be a "localised activity", for the most part.