San Sebastián

People lived on the site long before the city: Roman settlements of around 50–200 AD have been found in the old town, on the slopes of Urgull. The first written mention comes in 1014, when a monastery of Saint Sebastian with apple orchards for cider was given to the abbey of Leire. Around 1181 King Sancho VI of Navarre granted the town its charter, and in 1200 it passed to Castile, cutting Navarre off from its main outlet to the sea. Gascon-speaking settlers from Bayonne and beyond moved in from the early 13th century, traded with ports across Europe and dominated the town's life for centuries.

Walled and fortified near the new border with France, the town helped Charles V at the siege of Hondarribia and in 1728 became home to the Guipuzcoan Company of Caracas, which traded with the Americas. Its worst moment came in 1813, when British and Portuguese troops besieged and stormed the town and burned it almost to the ground; most of the old town's buildings date from the rebuilding that followed.

From 1885 the widowed Queen Maria Cristina spent every summer at the Miramar Palace, and the court and the aristocracy followed. A new town of Parisian-style blocks, a promenade and a casino turned San Sebastián into a fully fledged seaside resort, where the nobility and diplomats opened summer residences. During the Civil War republican prisoners were held in Ondarreta Prison on the beach. The film festival began in 1953, the Comb of the Wind was installed in the 1970s, the Kursaal opened in 1999, and in 2016 the city was a European Capital of Culture.

The year is marked by festivals. On 20 January the Tamborrada fills the city with drummers dressed as cooks and soldiers for 24 hours; it is the residents' own favourite feast. The jazz festival, Jazzaldia, founded in 1966, brings concerts to stages across the city in July, and in September the International Film Festival, the largest in Spain, draws stars to the Kursaal and the Victoria Eugenia Theatre. Basque Week in early September brings bertsolaris — improvising verse poets — pelota, stone lifting and the rowing races for the Flag of La Concha, followed from the promenades by thousands of supporters from the coastal towns that compete.

Donostia is a strongly Basque city. The first Basque-language schools after the Civil War were opened here in 1943 by Elvira Zipitria, who taught from her home in the old town, and the city's official name, Donostia / San Sebastián, is bilingual. Real Sociedad, one of the founding clubs of La Liga, plays at Anoeta, and the sculptor Eduardo Chillida's Comb of the Wind stands at the end of the bay.

Food is part of the city's identity as much as its festivals. San Sebastián has one of the highest concentrations of Michelin stars per head in the world, and the evening round of pintxo bars is how friends meet. Cider is the drink of the traditional fairs, from Basque Week to the Santo Tomás market on 21 December.

About 188,000 people lived in San Sebastián in 2024, and around 14.5 per cent of them were born abroad. The economy is dominated by services, especially commerce and tourism; some industry developed in Antiguo and on the outskirts, and a university campus and technology centres stand at Ibaeta in the west.

Most residents live away from the bay, in districts such as Amara Berri, Egia and Intxaurrondo, which grew on former marshes and farmland with the industrial expansion and immigration of the 1950s and 1960s. The old town and the Centro, nearest the sea, are the most visited parts of the city.

The day keeps the late Spanish rhythm. Early evening is the time for a drink and one or two pintxos in a bar before a later dinner, and in summer the La Concha promenade and the beaches fill after work. A wide network of cycle lanes, buses and the local trains carry most people around the compact city, and the hills of Ulia, Urgull and Igueldo are where people walk and run at weekends.

Pintxos are the city's best-known food: small snacks, many speared on a toothpick, laid out along the bar counters of the Parte Vieja and Gros. Bars offer pre-made cold pintxos, such as the gilda, alongside hot specialities cooked to order, and the custom is to take one or two with a drink and move on. Txakoli, a dry, slightly sparkling white wine with low alcohol, is poured from a height into tall glasses to go with them.

Beyond the bars, the city's cooking draws on wider Basque cuisine: salt cod al pil-pil or a la vizcaína, kokotxas, the cheeks of hake, marmitako, a tuna stew, txangurro, spider crab, and txuleta, steak grilled over hot coals, with Idiazabal sheep's cheese to finish. San Sebastián and its surroundings have one of the highest concentrations of Michelin-starred restaurants anywhere, including Arzak in the city, Akelarre on Igueldo and Mugaritz in nearby Errenteria.

In the hills around Astigarraga, just south of the city, the sagardotegi, or cider houses, open for a few months of the year. Cider is poured from a height straight into the glass, and the menu rarely changes: salt-cod omelette, grilled steak and sheep's cheese with walnuts and quince paste. At the Santo Tomás fair in December the traditional snack is txistorra, a thin fresh sausage, wrapped in talo flatbread.