🇪🇸 Spain · The North and the Atlantic Coast
San Sebastián, Donostia to Basques, is one of those cities that seem designed for enjoyment. Reclining on the bay of La Concha — a perfect crescent of golden sand and calm water, considered one of the most beautiful urban bays in the world — it combines the elegance of an old royal summer resort with the energy of a food and surf capital. Here green hills run down to the sea, the waves of the Bay of Biscay break on Zurriola beach and the seafront promenade, with its white belle époque railing, is one of the loveliest in Europe.
But if anything has given San Sebastián worldwide fame, it is its food. It is the city with the most Michelin stars per inhabitant in the world (with the sole exception of a spot or two in Japan): in and around it shine temples of fine dining such as Arzak, Akelarre, Martín Berasategui and Mugaritz. And at street level, in the Parte Vieja, pintxo culture reaches its highest expression: counters heaped with exquisite mouthfuls eaten standing up, from bar to bar, with a txakoli or a zurito. Eating here, at any level, is an unforgettable experience.
This guide covers San Sebastián with a practical and warm eye: how to plan your days between beach, hill and pintxos, which bars to choose in the Parte Vieja (and remember that here you pay for pintxos), how to get up Mount Igueldo and Mount Urgull for the best views, when the Film Festival falls, and how to get around a small, safe and agreeable city. Donostia is pure quality of life: you visit once and dream of coming back.
San Sebastián received its town charter towards the end of the twelfth century, around 1180, from King Sancho VI of Navarre, and grew in the shelter of Mount Urgull as a stronghold, a port and a trading and fishing town. Its position on the French frontier made it, for centuries, a military city, walled and often besieged. The most tragic episode of its history took place on 31 August 1813, during the Peninsular War: after a long siege, the Anglo-Portuguese allied troops fighting the French took the city and sacked and burned it almost entirely; of the old town only one street was left standing, today's calle 31 de Agosto, which commemorates that tragedy every year. San Sebastián was rebuilt from scratch on a new plan. Its great transformation came at the end of the nineteenth century, when the demolition of the walls (1863) let the city expand and, above all, when the queen regent María Cristina chose it as the court's summer residence. Turned into the elegant seaside resort of the Spanish aristocracy, San Sebastián lived its belle époque, with palaces, casinos, the Miramar Palace and the grand Hotel María Cristina. The twentieth century brought the Civil War (the city fell early to the rebels, in 1936), the long Franco dictatorship and, later, the decades of ETA terrorism, during which the Basque Country lived through a period of violence that ended with the definitive cessation of armed activity announced in 2011, three days after a peace conference held in San Sebastián itself. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Green Spain: the Basques and Euskera, the oldest language in Europe; the Camino de Santiago and the Galicia of the Compostela cathedral; the iron and steel industry; and the sober memory of the ETA conflict.
Read the history of The North and the Atlantic Coast →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The history of San Sebastián begins at the foot of Mount Urgull, on a tongue of land between the sea and the Urumea river that offered a sheltered natural harbour. Around the year 1180, King Sancho VI of Navarre, 'the Wise', granted Donostia its town charter, bringing it into the kingdom of Navarre, which was seeking an outlet to the Bay of Biscay. Shortly afterwards, at the start of the thirteenth century, the town and the whole of Gipuzkoa passed to the Crown of Castile, to which they would remain tied.
Through the Middle Ages and the early modern period, San Sebastián grew as a fishing and trading port and, above all, as a military stronghold. Its position, a step from the French border, made it a strategic enclave of the first order: a walled city, with a castle on top of Urgull, that was time and again a target in the wars between the Spanish and French crowns. The people of Donostia took to the sea as whalers and cod fishermen, reaching Newfoundland, and traded in iron, wool and colonial goods.
That status as a frontier stronghold shaped the city's destiny for centuries: it grew shut inside its walls, subject to sieges and bombardment, unable to expand. That permanent tension between its vocation as a city open to the sea and its reality as a military fortress would eventually explode in the greatest tragedy of its history, at the start of the nineteenth century.
The most tragic episode in San Sebastián's history took place during the Peninsular War against the Napoleonic occupation. In 1813 the city was held by a French garrison under General Louis Emmanuel Rey, and it was besieged by Anglo-Portuguese allied troops under the overall command of Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, in his advance to drive the French out of the peninsula.
After weeks of siege and several assaults, on 31 August 1813 the Anglo-Portuguese allied troops — the very forces that were in theory coming to free the city from the French — took San Sebastián by force and gave themselves over to a brutal sack. The attacking soldiers looted, raped, murdered civilians and set fire to the city. The fire went on for days and destroyed practically the whole town: of the old San Sebastián only one street was left standing, the one now named 31 de Agosto, in memory of that catastrophe. Of the roughly 7.000 inhabitants, a large share were left homeless, and many died or fled.
The event was, and remains, a matter of historical controversy. The Duke of Wellington later denied any responsibility on the part of the British troops and blamed the destruction on the French, but the testimonies and subsequent research point to the allied attackers as responsible for the sack and the fire. Every 31 August, San Sebastián remembers the tragedy with a candlelit ceremony, the 'Danbolada' and commemorative events. Out of those ashes, though, a new city would be born: the reconstruction was planned on an orderly layout that gave rise to modern San Sebastián.
San Sebastián's great transformation came in the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1863 the demolition of the walls that were choking the city was finally authorised, and Donostia could for the first time expand freely beyond the old town. The Ensanche was laid out, a new district of broad streets and elegant buildings (the 'Romantic Quarter'), and the city began to model itself on the European capitals of the day.
The decisive leap came from the monarchy. The queen regent María Cristina of Habsburg-Lorraine chose San Sebastián as the court's summer residence, and from the 1880s the city became the fashionable resort of the Spanish aristocracy and upper bourgeoisie. The Miramar Palace (1893) was built for the queen, English in feel, above the bay. The city filled with luxury hotels, casinos, spas, theatres and grand villas: this was the Donostia belle époque. From that golden age come symbols such as the Hotel María Cristina (1912), the Victoria Eugenia Theatre, the María Cristina bridge, the original Kursaal and the characteristic white railing of the Concha promenade, which gave San Sebastián its unmistakable elegant, cosmopolitan air.
The presence of the court and of high society turned the city into a showcase of fashion, leisure and modernity. Sea bathing, horse racing, tennis and summer tourism became popular. San Sebastián earned then the reputation as a refined and pleasurable city that, to a large extent, it keeps to this day.
The twentieth century brought San Sebastián, as it did the whole of Spain, the rupture of the Civil War. After the military coup of July 1936 against the Republic, the city went through a few weeks of resistance, but it fell early to the rebel troops, in September 1936. The occupation was accompanied by harsh repression against supporters of the Republic and of Basque nationalism.
During Franco's long dictatorship (1939-1975), San Sebastián, like the rest of the Basque Country, suffered the suppression of liberties, the ban on the public use of Euskera and the persecution of any expression of Basque identity or political dissent. At the same time, and paradoxically, the city kept its role as a summer destination: Franco himself spent summer seasons at the Ayete Palace in San Sebastián, and the city remained a holiday resort for the Spanish bourgeoisie.
It was also in this period, in 1953, that the San Sebastián International Film Festival was born, which in time would become one of the great film events in Europe and a cultural symbol of the city. But beneath the surface of the resort city there was deep political unrest which, in the late Franco years, would lead to one of the most painful chapters in the recent history of the Basque Country.
Between the last years of Francoism and the first decades of democracy, the Basque Country lived through a long and painful period marked by the terrorism of ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, 'Basque Country and Freedom'), an armed organisation of nationalist and pro-independence ideology founded in 1959. Over several decades ETA committed more than 850 murders, as well as kidnappings, extortion and bombings, with the declared aim of achieving by force the independence of a Basque state. The violence struck politicians, security forces, business owners, journalists and ordinary citizens, and shaped social and political life in the Basque Country and across Spain for years.
Donostia and Gipuzkoa were one of the settings of that period, which left a deep mark of suffering on the victims and on society. The response to terrorism combined police and judicial action, international cooperation and a growing civic mobilisation against violence. Over the years ETA was weakened until it was isolated.
The end came in stages. After an earlier ceasefire, on 20 October 2011 ETA announced the 'definitive cessation of its armed activity'. The announcement came three days after an International Peace Conference was held in San Sebastián itself, with the participation of mediators and international figures, calling for an end to the violence. Years later, on 3 May 2018, the organisation announced its definitive dissolution. The end of the violence opened a new period of coexistence and remembrance, in which recognition of all the victims remains central. This is recent, complex and sensitive history that Basque society is still working through.
The San Sebastián of the twenty-first century is a peaceful, prosperous city internationally recognised for its quality of life. It has managed to combine its belle époque inheritance — the Concha promenade, the grand hotels, the elegant air of the summer court — with a cultural and culinary vitality that places it among the most desirable destinations in Europe.
Its great trademark is food. Cradle of the 'new Basque cuisine', San Sebastián and its surroundings hold one of the highest densities of Michelin stars in the world, with temples such as Arzak, Akelarre, Martín Berasategui and Mugaritz, and a pintxo culture, in the Parte Vieja and in Gros, that has made the simple act of eating standing up, from bar to bar, an experience famous around the planet. Added to that are the gastronomic societies (the 'txokos'), so typical of the city.
Culturally, the International Film Festival (Zinemaldia), which every September fills the city with stars and screenings, is its great event, and in 2016 San Sebastián was European Capital of Culture. The city also lives on tourism, on surfing at Zurriola beach, on the art of Chillida and Oteiza, and on an urban landscape that wins people over: the bay of La Concha, the hills of Urgull and Igueldo, the Comb of the Wind. Proud of its Basque identity and its co-official Euskera, Donostia is today the best proof that a city can overcome the tragedies of its history and become a byword for beauty, good food and quality of life.