With only a month of our Grand Tour remaining, we upped sticks from our palatial pad in Gatika and drove east towards the town considered to be the gastronomic capital of Spain, and certainly the pintxo capital of Basque Country, San Sebastian-Donostia, another town with a Spanish-Basque hyphenated name. The old main road, the N634, took us inland for the first part of the journey, first to Gernika and down to Durango, and then passing through several small towns like Erma, Eibar, Elgoibar, San Pedro and Mendaro. All of these towns are in deep narrow valleys and crammed full of factories, old and new; high density apartment buildings, up to nine or ten storeys high, fill whatever space is left, a somewhat shocking contrast to the natural beauty of the hills that surround them on all sides. The newer AP-8 “autopista” follows much the same route, ironing out the bends with a series of tunnels, bridges and viaducts, as the two roads snake over and under each other, the one, a fast, open, toll road, the other, slower, sometimes constricted, but more interesting. Soon after Mendaro, their paths separated and, after passing yet another enormous stone quarry that seemed to have consumed a complete mountain, we headed towards the sea through Deba, a small town on the estuary of the Deba Ibaia. Then, following a winding road and zigzagging in long loops north and south through pretty farmland, we eventually arrived at the larger port town of Zumaia on the Urola Ibaia estuary, where there was a pleasant older town on the left bank of the river, and a marina and the shipyard of Astilleros Balenciaga on the right bank.
A short 3km drive along a road hugging the coast down at sea level and we arrived at our last Spanish digs, and what a greeting we received!
Our opportunities for living free having dried up, we had reverted back to AirBnB and found an apartment overlooking the sea at the small fishing port of Getaria, with the all-important parking garage. Yet again we found ourselves in accommodation that is even better than its on-line description. The two-bedroom apartment was on the fourth floor of a modern glass-fronted building with floor to ceiling windows, and as we first entered the living room the view took our breath away.
A short peninsular with a large rocky promontory at the end creates two bays for Getarians to enjoy. The fishing port is to the right of the rock as you look out to sea, well protected from the Atlantic swells that push far into the Bay of Biscay, and a sandy beach extends further to the east of the village. To the left of the peninsular is the small bay that we overlooked, exposed to those aforementioned ocean swells, with rocks at each side and a small beach, well washed twice a day by the tides as they pushed right up to the sea wall with long regular waves that were popular with the local surfing community. Huge windows in both the living room and the main bedroom ensured we never missed any of the action twenty metres or more below us, either on the part of the surfers or of the ever-changing actions of the wind-swept ocean itself.
Getaria is a small community, fishing, vineyards and production of Txakoli, the local wine, and a door fittings factory (owned by our building landlords) being the only obvious industries, though we came to understand it is popular with mainly Spanish tourists in the season. One can easily walk all around the village and the port in an hour or so, although the temptations of the many small pintxo bars and two or three good ‘panaderia’ inevitably tended to slow our own progress.
With so much freshly caught fish available, Getaria also has a reputation for its local restaurants with their outdoor grills upon which that day’s catch is cooked to perfection. So our first stop was to take lunch at “Iribar Jatetxea” where we shared a squid and fava bean salad, followed by grilled monkfish and a dessert of apple tart with cider ice-cream. This gourmand feast was accompanied by a glass of the aforementioned Txakoli, a slightly sparkling, acidic white wine, that needs to be drunk within one year of bottling, and is rather dramatically poured from a height to maximize the effervescence; a pretty good way to celebrate our arrival in this delightful place!
Small as it is, Getaria has a couple of justifiably famous sons, Juan Sebastián Elcano and Cristóbal Balenciaga Eizaguirre. Whilst many people have heard of Ferdinand Magellan, the famous Portuguese explorer who discovered the Strait of Magellan and became the first European to cross the Pacific Ocean, not so many are aware that of his five ships that set out to find a western sea route to the Spice Islands, only one, the “Nao Victoria”, completed the circumnavigation of the globe and returned to Spain. That lone ship and its much-diminished crew of 23 eventually returned to Spain in September 1522 three years after the expedition’s departure, under the command of Juan Sebastián Elcano.
This very able sailor was born in Getaria and, later, much revered, there being no less than three memorials to him; one is a fine statue in the small village square, next to the community Basque pelota court where the children played various ball games every afternoon after school,
and a second statue is on a small terrace overlooking the port, and a few yards away from the site of his home that overlooked the same bay that we were enjoying.
The last and most impressive is a stone barbican at the entrance to the village, topped with a flying angel figure in the Art Deco style, thirty or forty feet high above the main street. The angel figure is a representation of the Virgin Mary in recognition of her role for those at sea, as a sign of hope and the guiding star “Stella Maris”.
Cristóbal Balenciaga Eizaguirre, however, was cut from a very different cloth. Born in Getaria in 1895 to a seamstress mother, he began work as an apprentice to a tailor at the age of twelve, and went on to become a fashion designer in his own right and the founder of the Balenciaga fashion house. His memory is maintained in Getaria by the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museoa, a very modern museum up the hill above the village. The exterior of the museum is not very fitting to its picturesque surroundings – perhaps a reflection of Balenciaga’s own aversion to following fashion? However, the spacious museum inside is a quite superb collection of his creations displayed to show how this man, who learnt how to cut material at a very early age, was able to translate that experience into his career as a designer.
His creations drew inspiration from the clothing of Basque people from all walks of life, offering costumes both stunning and comfortable, and earning him his reputation as a “couturier of uncompromising standards”, much admired, even by other famous designers of the same era such as Christian Dior and Coco Chanel. Naturally Celine enjoyed the exhibition immensely, but even for a dedicated non-fashionista such as myself, the work of this leader in fashion design, and a true artist, was fascinating, especially as many of the exhibits reminded me so much of the clothes worn by beautiful young things in London’s West End in my student days in the 60’s. Perhaps reminiscing for those days, and realizing how ugly today’s world has become in so many ways, I believe the lovely quote in the introductory video we watched before entering the exhibition says it all, “. . . fashion is something we love today and hate tomorrow, art is something we hate today and love tomorrow”.
The port of Getaria is also attractive to walk around, even if history, the world of fashionistas, and delicious food are not high on one’s ‘bucket list’. Built at the bottom of a steep hill, at the top of and beyond which one finds rolling farmland, vineyards, sheep grazing in the fields and the occasional raucous donkey waiting at the roadside to greet new visitors, every part of the village has views over the sea with the large promontory of Mount San Anton in the foreground, and nestled beneath it, the commercial port protecting its fleet of a dozen or more tough-looking offshore fishing vessels and dozens of much smaller workboats, as well as the occasional pleasure craft, moored alongside and anchored within the sturdy stone sea-wall. After our visit to the Balenciaga Museao, we walked further up around the outskirts of the village, then down past the seaman’s club, the Flying Angel, and then further down into the port itself. There, on some evenings, women and sometimes men, would be busy checking through and mending the piles of nets to make ready for the fishermen’s next trips out to challenge the whims of the sea, to return with full holds and the promise of better bank balances, for, romantic as the life can appear to be, to these people fishing is simply a way of making a living, and their very survival still depends on their knowledge of the sea and their ability to harvest its riches in all weathers. We were rarely alone, as we would stroll around the port and along the sea wall, as clearly the locals also enjoyed such simple pleasures as the evenings drew in and the sun disappeared below the surrounding hills. But for our first visit, in the early afternoon, we continued our walk to the base of the large rock, found the entrance to Parkeo San Anton and followed the footpath that zigzagged up the rock’s eastern slope where one is protected from the weather. The big fishing boats in the harbor started to look quite small as we climbed, passing a small gathering of cormorants sunning themselves on a rocky outcrop after their fishing exploits.
Some artist from the past had sculpted three life-size figures out of one of the rocks beside the path that led up to the Pharo de Getaria. Halfway up, we rested awhile beside a grassy sward dotted with daisies and dandelions, and then strolled on gently upwards through green glades where camellias were in bloom, towards the lighthouse perched on the seaward side, visible from the village only as a light flashing on the night-time clouds. The rock is a softish sandstone and, where exposed to wind and rain, the elements have eroded and pockmarked the surface so that it looks like a giant sponge in places, with the seagulls enjoying the shelter of the many small holes and crevices, after their aerial sorties over the bay far below. But we still hadn’t reached our destination, a squat watchtower at the very top of Mount San Anton, now unused except as a resting place and shelter for the likes of us, as we savoured the view of our little village 100m below. We descended by a different route, a narrow footpath that initially switchbacks its way steeply down from the top of the hill, and passed by the rusting hulk of a very old diesel-driven road-roller on a pedestal in another grassy clearing, that, according to a plaque riveted to its side, had “served well the department of works of the county of Guipuzcoa from 1931 until 1983”; it was, however, difficult to work out quite how it had reached its final resting place!
Arriving back at sea-level, we completed our wonderful day by walking back to our glass-fronted eyrie, along the top of the seawall around the edge of our little bay as the sun finally disappeared behind the hills and night arrived, and the gentle whooshing noises of the sea against the rocks continued into the darkness.
The sun doesn’t shine everyday in Basque Country, a fact well demonstrated by the day we chose to drive inland in what began as a light shower, to follow La Ruta de Los Tres Templos. According to the San Sebastian Tourist Office, Gipuzkoa is a land of “religion and spirituality” and is “home to three of the most reputed and important churches in all of Spain: La Santuria de Loiola, the birthplace of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and the cradle of the Jesuits, La Santurio de Arantzazu, and the Ermita de la Antigua which is one of the stages in Saint Ignatius de Loiola’s pilgrimage in 1522 when he left Loiola intending to reach Jerusalem.” Our first stop was at the tourist office in Azpeitia (=Loiola) where we had a very enlightening conversation with a young woman, eager to practice her English.
The Santuria de Loiola, an imposing 18th century Baroque temple, was closed for the afternoon, in observation of siesta-time, and it had started to rain quite hard, so we opted to dash back to our car and drive to our furthermost goal, the Arantzazu Sanctuary, 700m above sea-level in Oñati. A picturesque drive through the foothills of the Pyrenees eventually led us into forbidding mountain country, and even though the rain had stopped when we arrived at the Franciscan sanctuary, the bitter wind added to the inhospitable feeling of the place making us disinclined to loiter.
The impressive basilica, rebuilt in 1950 with some ferocious stone facing on the outside and lots of wood inside, although not exactly magnificent, was an impressive if unusual structure, probably more praiseworthy to the pilgrims who make their way there, none of whom had made it that far on this grey day. So we soon started to retrace our steps back to the lovely coast, stopping briefly at an Eroski supermarket in Azkoitia for one or two essentials for our pantry, and to grab in their café the usual coffee and pintxos that, in those days, my tummy seemed habitually to demand around late afternoon. Not our most enlightening or interesting day, but we did enjoy yet more of the wonderful countryside that abounds thereabouts, in spite of a distinct lack of nice little roadside cafés!
Our last trip inland a few days later took us to Pamplona, or rather Iruña if we stick to the Basque names, an hour’s drive along the excellent A-15, a superb road through the foothills at the western end of the Pyrenees, with several high viaducts several hundred metres long as well as many tunnels, as it passes through wild rugged countryside. Probably best known for the San Fermin Festival and the running of the bulls which Ernest Hemingway described so vividly in his two books, “The sun also rises” and “Death in the afternoon”, Pamplona-Iruña turned out to be a fine city in its own right with lots of pedestrianised streets lined by beautiful Renaissance buildings, many of which sport the coats of arms of the great Basque families.
It was a more enjoyable city to walk around than Vitoria-Gasteiz we had visited earlier, and after more than three hours strolling the older and newer parts and, of course, making our usual stops for afternoon sustenance, we came away well impressed. Just a shame that it is nearly 500m above sea-level and prone to a more continental type climate – colder in winter and hotter in summer – otherwise we could easily consider it a fine city to live near, praise indeed for your city-phobic scribe.
Last, but by no means least in this Spanish region of so many delights, mention must be made of San Sebastian-Donastia, one of Spain’s favourite luxury holiday resorts and famed as being the ‘tapas, or rather pintxo, capital of the world’! Squeezed up tight against the French border and tucked into the corner of the Bay of Biscay, this visually stunning city lives up to many aspects of its reputation. It was a pleasant 45 minute drive for us from Getaria, along the N634 which snakes through the valleys past Aginaga and Usurbil on the river Oria Ibaia till we reached Iru-Bide and the start of the industrial hinterland that is an integral part of every large city in this part of Northern Spain. Arriving in San Sebastian, we were immediately caught up in the onerous system of one-way streets and ended up at the far western end of the beautiful Bahía de la Concha, bordered by the small Playa de Ondaretta and the longer Playa de la Concha, two wide strands of golden sand from where one looks across at the Isla de Santa Clara in the mouth of the bay and the Castilla de la Mota on the headland above the old city to one’s right.
Our first stop was the Peine del Viento, or ‘The Comb of the Wind’, a set of three ten-tonne steel sculptures embedded into the rocks at the end of the promenade. The work of Eduardo Chillida, installed and arranged by the Basque architect Luis Peña Ganchegui, the installation includes a series of blow-holes in the pavement as you approach the sculptures, through which the incoming waves vent their force as blasts of cool sea-spray laden air and, if the waves are big enough, powerful water spouts, all of which must be lovely on a hot summer’s day but were not so appreciated on that rather cool February afternoon.
Thence, into the main city centre, where once again the weather really wasn’t very cooperative, it was still winter after all, and after a short walk in the drizzling rain around the area of the late 19th century Artzian Onaren Katedrala, the Good Shepherd Cathedral of San Sebastian, we upped sticks again and drove across to the old town to seek out one of the many ‘pintxo’ bars. Again the one-way system caught us in its grasp and it took two circles of the east end of the city before we managed to get access to the entrance to the underground car-park on Boulevard Zumardia, cunningly hidden behind lanes in the street dedicated to the buses which managed to squeeze us out of the way every time we thought we were getting close. But the effort was well worth such low-level stress, for the old town was a joy to walk around, rain or no rain. We followed our noses past the market hall and through to Constitucion Plaza with its fine colonnades on all four sides and the old town hall topped by a clock and a fine coat of arms at one end. Three balconies along the length of all the buildings surrounding the plaza, all decorated identically with light blue shutters, yellow painted door frames and white stucco walls, had us puzzled for a while as every room had a large number over the doorway. It turned out that the numbers remain as a reminder of days gone by, when the plaza was used as a bull fighting arena, and every room was rented by the gentry, like boxes in a theatre.
As we continued our stroll along the old streets, admiring the renaissance architecture and the handsome wrought iron balconies, we mingled with the rain-dampened crowd and noticed many children, and the occasional adult, prettily dressed in what we took to be traditional costume of some sort. Little boys, similarly attired, carried small cooking pots and sticks which they used as make-shift drums.
Mystified, we eventually dove into a very busy bar, Casa Alcalde, where the bar was piled high from end to end with pintxos to suit every taste. Designed to be small snacks to accompany a beer or a glass of wine, the most common component to many ‘pintxos’ were ‘anchoa’ (anchovies), though not the excessively salty ones like those you find in a can. Usually served on a small piece of baguette or similar local bread, a veritable cornucopia of delicious flavours go into the building of a pintxo, ‘anchoa’, ‘jamon’, ‘queso’, ‘pimiento’, ‘aceite de olive’, many types of ‘pescados’, ‘huevos’, ‘pollo’, ‘tortilla española’, and goodness knows what else, mostly, though not all, served cold. One we particularly enjoyed was the “Gilda”, a spicy cocktail stick of anchovies, hot green peppers and olives, named in homage to that ‘hot spicy actress’ Rita Hayworth, after her role in the film of the same name! Anyway, as we were enjoying an eclectic mix of four or five pintxos apiece, washed down with a cool glass of ‘cerveza’, a slight commotion outside solved the earlier mystery. The Caldereros Festival, was initiated on February 2nd 1884 to celebrate the Catholic festival of Candlemas, when a Hungarian carnival group, the Caldereros, paraded for the first time in San Sebastian-Donostia. It is now celebrated every year on the first Saturday of February, which happened to be the day we were there; the commotion outside was in fact the parade of the 18 tribes, or ‘calderero krewes’, groups of children and adults dressed in costume, banging their pots and pans, traditionally accompanied by a bear and a bear cub, though all we saw was a donkey or two, commemorating the arrival of the travelling people to the city. Great fun and a lovely happy way to bring a rather damp day to a close.
Naturally our time in Getaria was not all tourist sightseeing. We were there to try out this little corner of the world as a future place to live and to live like locals in some small way, and so the small town of Zarautz, about three miles west of Getaria played an important part in our considerations. This was also a town that relied heavily on tourism, and yet it had a well-lived in, neighbourly feeling, even if the locals made sure we didn’t forget we were in Basque Country!
We made good use of the local Eroski supermarket with a fish counter where sales assistants made an art form of filleting the very fresh fish, beautifully displayed on beds of ice. And back in Getaria, across the road from our apartment, there was a very friendly grocery whose owner was always happy to give us little tidbits about Basque life in general and the pleasures of living in the village. Everywhere we went, people were friendly and welcoming. These small, but important details all helped to confirm our feelings about the allure of this area.
Sadly, as always, time was marching on, and with only another week before our stay in Getaria would come to an end, we determined to fill the remaining days with visits across the border in French Basque Country, similar to its Spanish neighbour in many ways, but by no means exactly the same, as we were soon to find out.
