For more than twenty years, the destiny of Călăraşi has inevitably been connected to the Siderurgical enterprises, its evolution was entirely connected to the evolution of the factory. But then disaster struck Călăraşi: the factory went bankrupt.
At the end of the ’70s, Ceauşescu wanted to build a big factory near Bucharest. His idea was to bring iron ore down the Danube (because this was the cheapest method) and produce steel. The real construction began in 1978 and eight years later the first section (the coke and chemical one) was ready for production. A few years later other sections were ready too: the electric steel factory, the rolling mill for medium profiles, the deposit for raw material and the section for enriching the iron ore. Many specialists from the most important factories (from Reşiţa, Galaţi and Hunedoara) and diligent workers from Moldavo came to visit Călăraşi, in those days. All of them got a house in the most prosperous neighbourhood in town, which was named (as if there was no alternative) “2 Moldavians”. The older teachers remember that students from the Industrial School who worked at the Siderurgical Enterprises had higher salaries than the teaching staff and that “nobody would breathe a word in front of them”.
In the ’80s, the city was living its glory days. It also won a prize as “the cleanest city in the Socialist Republic of Romania”. Moreover, the Zoo from Călăraşi was the largest in the country and was an important animal provider for the other zoos in the country. But out of the blue the revolution came along. As the factory was not entirely finished, the change was not a good one for the people from Călăraşi and in 1998, the Siderurgical Enterprises closed down. In 2001 it went bankrupt and in 2005 it was cut into pieces and sold as scrap iron. Continue reading “From “city near the factory” to “the city of one thousand taverns””