The beauty of the bay of Txingudi that recreates the river Bidasoa, the forests and deep cliffs of the slopes of Jaizkibel, the “traditional and postmodern” cuisine of the accommodations of the port... Hondarribia has many claims.

In these lines, however, the usual escapes will be avoided and will be fortified within the walls of the villa along with the historian Koldo Ortega. He is currently immersed in the recovery of the tower, bells and clocks of the Church of Our Lady of Asuncion and Manzano, but he has taken a while to talk to us about the secrets of Hondarribia, which, despite being visible, are not so obvious.

Testimony of stone

We will start the approach of the old part through the alameda. The release of cobblestones brings us from Romanesque to Gothic and Baroque to Renaissance by the Great Way. It is up to us to make the first stop at the door of Santa Maria. It is one of the two main accesses the villa had. Even though he had a bridge in his day, there is currently only one arch left. The shield of the city of 1694 rises above it.

Once past we left the “Corner of the Painters” to the left. Surrounded by historic buildings, the street corner, which barely reaches half a century, is nourished by numerous visitors’ flashes. On the left are the City Hall and the Zuloaga house. “XVIII. It shows the Baroque civil architecture of the twentieth century,” says Ortega. Between the two is the house he saw in number 10 to create the poet and writer Fernando Artola Bordari.”

Opposite, the 17th century Hotel Pampinot or Casadevante Palace. It is said that it was there that the truce of the 1638 site was negotiated. We passed the church and arrived at the Plaza de Armas, on the hill of the old part.

The Sun King in Hondarribia

The temple, designed by Francisco de Ibero, is Gothic in style and is built on the remains of the wall. On the back wall of the bell tower there are remnants of the church plan, sculpted in the stone by the Ibero himself. He put it so that the workers always had it in front of their eyes and until today it has remained “half-naked” as in a secret medium. Here, corner with the tower and a few centimeters from the ground, is a capitel that should be integrated into the wall, in front of a column. It's not the only legend that's around the church. We leave it for another occasion, which says that there is a diamond ring at the base of the building.

On the opposite wall, on the other hand, there is the porch that connects the church with the castle of Carlos V.aren. The door was built for the Sun King to go through there. The representatives of the French and Spanish monarchies signed the Pyrenees Convention (Peace of the Pyrenees) in 1659, as Ortega explains. “This convention also provided for marriage between Luis XI V.aren and Filipe I V.aren, daughter of Maria Teresa. They were married in 1660 in Hondarribia, but we know that Sun King did not tread the city of the rock liver.”

Rubens tapestries

Peter Paul Rubens, one of the most renowned painters in the Barroco, is currently in Hondarribia. It was not him, of course, but his work. “Rubens made four collections of tapestries throughout his life and one of them” is visible in the parador of the Plaza de Armas – the Castle of Carlos V.aren – but not in its entirety. Of the eight pieces that make up the collection, two are lost.

The current building is built on the castle that the King of Navarra Sancho Abarka ordered to build at the end of the 10th century. “The old walls that you see in the cafeteria are the traces of the above,” Ortega explained. Since 1968, “after hand-in-hand walking”, he is a Parador de Turismo.

Still to be discovered

Without leaving the old town, through Calle Mayor we will reach the exit of San Nicolás, taking Calle San Nicolás, to return to the starting point through the streets General Leiba and Pintor Etxenagusia. However, we have left to your eyes a multitude of secrets – certainly – that we have found along the way, waiting for whom to take our witness and witness these stories.