The brief and simple account of the destruction of San Sebastian on August 31, 1813, usually has a happy ending in the Aizpurua farmhouse of Zubieta. On 8 and 9 September, several Donostiarras met there to respond to what happened a week earlier. Out, immediately, the city was seen as missing from the map. When La Gazeta de Madrid reported what happened, he added: “Only the memory of your location will remain from San Sebastian.” The congregants in Zubieta, on the other hand, decided to create a new city hall and rebuild the city; another thing was the execution of what was agreed.

If what happened at the end of August was sudden, crude, the winter disaster of 1814 was colder, slower, quieter, very different, but just as terrible.

No aid

On February 20, 1814, Mayor Gregorio Iturbe sent a letter to the Spanish Republic in which he regretted the lack of response and request for help. In the introduction, the letter said that San Sebastian was “the most unfortunate city in the world, almost without physical existence, and all at the end of its moral existence.” Iturbe and the other councillors assured that for five months they had endeavoured to publicize the situation of the city and get help, but the Congress had not responded to them until then. The authorities in Madrid ignored them for the third time. They also addressed those responsible for the destruction to ask for reconstruction aid or to collect the same rations as the soldiers ate. Generals Graham, Castaños and Alava did not respond. Wellington yes, he was a foreigner and didn't know anything about the country. In the days after the fire, there was no help to clean the remains of the buildings, so working groups were organized in the neighboring towns. Neither the Spanish Government nor its allies received compensation, subsidies or funding for the reconstruction of the city.

In the months after the destruction of the city, there were about 300 inhabitants inside the walls. Most Donostiarras lived in about 400 homes outside the city. But outside the walls, you couldn't rebuild the city. Between 1814 and 1817, the inhabitants of the outer neighborhoods did not obtain the authorization of the Ministry of War to rebuild their houses.

Symbolic support came in 1816. King Ferdinand VII declared himself a protector of the city. However, a communiqué of July 1824 states that the city still did not receive any compensation. The help of the king did not exceed the symbolic level on June 10, 1828, when the first stone of the City Hall of Plaza Nueva was placed.

Run over

Despite a passive attitude of help, the military leaders of the destruction were active in looting. Looting began before the fire was extinguished. The stolen money was sold at the height of the British barracks, while General Graham was turning a blind eye. On the same day, 4 September, the Council of Gipuzkoa requested in vain the lifting of the body of the young woman. The looting lasted for months. If the activity went down, it was because there was nothing left to steal. At the end of November, several owners of the San Martin neighborhood denounced the intention of an English officer to bring the sillares of their homes.

And in the spring of 1814, direct theft made way for the indirect hand of speculators who didn't have the scruples to do the business of tragedy. Before the fire they came to ask for EUR 12,000 for the warehouses of GBP 900 a year of rent they currently had. The rise in the price of bread in summer sparked protests.

While a few were enriched, the population lived in extreme poverty, without the possibility of safeguarding themselves from the cold of winter. Although the area was full of forests, there were no means of transporting wood. They even ran out of firewood to keep Igeldo's lighthouse on.

What was missing: malaria

The financial bankruptcy of the City Hall was total. There were no municipal doctors, no hospitals, so the Donostiarras were unprotected from diseases and epidemics. Juan Miguel Zatarain, owner of the river junk, also had no money to heal the swine, and found an ideal environment for the proliferation of anopheles mosquitoes. According to the chronicles of the time, in the winter of 200 years ago malaria caused between 8 and 10 deaths per day. More than a thousand Donostiarras died on arrival than allied soldiers. Although the City Hall immediately ordered Zatarain to clean the swamps, the obstinate and irresponsible owner brought the matter to court, and it took three years to heal the contagion and get rid of the epidemic.

And many more years to quell the consequences of the fire, to settle the incalculable debt deposited by the military and to implement what has been decided in Zubieta.