About Zarautz

Introduction

The coastal town of Zarautz is located in the province of Gipuzkoa, some 20 kilometres west of the city of Donostia (San Sebastian). Presently, its population hovers around some 22,000 people but is constantly heading upwards. In the summertime, the number of people living in Zarautz nearly triples the permanent population thanks to a huge influx of tourists who come to enjoy Zarautz's beautiful beach, which is one of the longest in the Basque country, as well as its beautiful surroundings and excellent restaurants. My little guide to Zarautz tells a lot more than most guides since it tells it from an interested outsider's point of view and tells the unvarnished truth.

History

Zarautz was settled even in Roman times as evidenced by recent excavations of Roman graves in the town. There are also Roman-built cobblestone roads (galtzadak) that still wind their way to the nearby town of Getaria.

Zarautz was officially founded in 1237 when the King of Castile Ferdinand III granted it a charter. The lineage "Zarautz" is proven since the motto "Zarautz before Zarautz" is inscribed on the coat of arms at the Narros Palace, indicative that it predates the town.

Zarautz started off as a coast town dedicated to fishing and whaling until the 16th century. The sea made its way even further inland than now which explains the origin of one of the quarters of the town, Azken Portu (Last Harbour), even though it is now far from the sea. After the 16th century, Zarautz's seafaring tradition went into sharp decline but the town switched to other activities such as iron works, shipbuilding, furniture manufacturing, textiles, and agriculture.

Zarautz has always had its long, exquisite beach but it was largely ignored by the locals until public tastes changed and it began to be highly valued. In the 19th century, Europe's rich and famous spent long summers in Biarritz. Spanish aristocrats followed suit and towards the 1850's, the Spanish Queen Isabella II's court fled Madrid's sultry winters in favour of the cooler Basque coast, principally Donostia- San Sebastian, which is nearby Biarritz. This summer retreat eventually even reached Zarautz, giving rise to many palaces, villas, and mansions being built along the beach. Nearly all of these villas, mansions, and palaces have been torn down over the last 30-40 years in favour of apartment buildings and flats, which have proven to be a quite lucrative business since each apartment overlooking the sea commands an exhorbitant price.

Today, Zarautz is a modern, upscale town that is constantly growing and is a centre of what one might call "upmarket" tourism since the tourists who come to Zarautz come for its great gastronomy and atmosphere, not necessarily for its weather (admittedly much cloudier and rainier than Spain's and Portugal's southern coasts) or cheap megahotels as one can find in places like Benidorm or Salou. In spite of the great influx of tourists over the years and its rapid population growth, it has managed to maintain its Basque character in terms of the language spoken. Over 74% of the population can speak Basque and certainly 100% of the children under 15 can speak it.

Things to see and do

Over the last 120 years, one of Zarautz's most important sources of revenue has been tourism so it is hardly surprising that the town has a hearty tourist-friendly infrastructure. There are a good many hotels and guest houses (pentsioak or pensiones) where the tourist can stay as well as varies camp grounds and rural houses. There is plenty on offer in the way of fine Basque food (and other kinds as well now) and the local shops offer excellent quality goods. Zarautz also has a rather dinky 9-hole golf course but it is located in front of the ocean where the golfer can golf in the salt air. Surfing is also big in Zarautz where the waves are among the best in the Basque Country. That accounts for where there are so many good surfers from Zarautz and why there are so many surfing shops, world-championship surfing contests, and surfers from all over the world riding the waves off the 2 km-long Zarautz beach.
The landmarks that might interest tourists who are interesting in architecture and historical heritage of Zarautz, the following places may be of interest:

• Dorre Luzea (Tall Tower): It is a nice building dating back to the 15th century and was built as a fort and watchtower.
• Narros Palace: Gothic-style building that harks back to the beginning of the 16th century and is surrounded by a pretty garden. During the Christmas season, there is a nifty life-sized Nativity scene and the grounds are opened up to the public. There is a fine library inside as well though there is no public access to it.
• The Parish Church of St. Mary Royale The main parish church known for its Plateresque-Renaissance style. .
• Convent of the Franciscan Fathers: A nice building dating back to the 17th century.
• Portu House: Renaissance-style building where the local town council and town government are located.
• St. Clare's Convent: An august 17th century building where there are still nuns (ever aging) who never leave its confines.

Zarautz has not one, not two, but three museums:

• Art and History Museum: It was recently opened in 2002 and shows how the town has evolved from the 10th century to the present day.
• Sea School Museum: Dedicated to marine ecology.
• Photomuseum: A musem dedicated to photography offering a wide variety of camera equipment on display ranging from daguerrotypes to the very first tote cameras in history.

F.A.Q.

1. Why do you live in Zarautz?

I like Zarautz because it has the advantages of a small city as well as the advantages of living in a town.

2. What is it like to live in Zarautz?

The climate is very mild. It rarely gets colder than 8 degrees Celsius or hotter than 35 degrees Celsius. It is a town where there are no "poor" areas, a town that is definitely prosperous.
There is always something going on in Zarautz. There are various sports competitions held ranging from world-class surfing contests to triathlons to folk dance competitions to cycling races.
Zarautz has lots of great festivals or "fiestas", the most popular of which are San Pelaio (St. Pelagius) and the Basque Festival (Euskal Jaia), held on June 26 and September 9, respectively. The Basque Festival is especially fun since everyone dresses up in Basque folk garb and there are various events held, including a town play which is performed on Munoa square.
Christmas is especially nice. One of the most impressive events is when they stage the arrival of the Three Wise Men (Erregeak or "Kings") in Zarautz on the night of January 5. They ride through the streets of Zarautz and throw candy and sweets at the kids. They eventually make their way towards the Town Square (Lege Zaharren Enparantza) where the manger with the baby Jesus awaits them. There, in the "bertsolari" (bard), the Three Wise Men each sing praises the baby Jesus upon giving him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

3. When is the best time to see in Zarautz?

Most people come and visit Zarautz between June 20 and September 20. August is a particularly busy month when the population jumps to three times the number of permanent residents. If you are into basking on a jam-packed beach or into surfing on long, hot days, July and August are indeed the best months to come, especially if you are also into lively night club scenes equally jam-packed with people who dance, have fun, and, yes, drink a lot well into the wee hours of the morning, especially in the area known as "The Zone".
I would personally recommend coming for the Basque Festival (Euskal Jaia) held on September 9. It is a festival where everyone dresses up as a Basque, even if they have very non-Basque faces (more and more African, Oriental, Arab, Viking-like faces can be seen dressed up in Basque Folk costumes, a sight that stirs my heart with hope and pride).

6. How does Zarautz treat outsiders, for example, British, Americans,

Irish, etc.?

Zarautz is becoming more and more cosmopolitan and so most Zarauztarrak are quite used to people from outside of Zarautz, indeed, they are quite used to people from outside the country. It should be said that the Irish are loved the most, followed by the Brits, and lastly, the Yanks. It is ironic that American pop culture is much maligned and much loved but there is great resentment against the U.S. government, particularly since George W. Bush has been in office. There are even a small minority who accordingly dislike every American and everything American regardless of what they think, do, or say. All in all, life is good in Zarautz, even if you are American.

7. How much Basque is spoken in Zarautz?

Officially some 75% of Zarautz speaks Basque but it is another question as to exactly how many people actually use it. Certainly most of the very young speak mostly in Basque among themselves as well as most of the very old. It gets dicey as far as everybody else in between.
There are several people, even those born in Zarautz who spoke little or even no Basque. These are mostly people born before 1975 and went to schools where the language of instruction was Spanish and absolutely no classes were offered in Basque (save for the "Ikastola"). Old hands here have told me that Basque was quite simply not spoken very much in public towards the end of the 1950's and the beginning of the 1960's. Things started changing towards the end of the 1960's and the 1970's. After the death of Franco, Basque really underwent a revival and by the mid 1990's, most of the Basque children in Zarautz schools not only spoke Basque, they were, for the most part, actually being educated through the medium of Basque. I remember that when I opened my language school in 1987-1988, half of the students knew Basque very well while the other half knew little or nearly none. By 1995, nearly every student under 15 had a good knowledge of Basque.
Nevertheless, Zarauztarrak are highly fond of what is known in sociolinguistics as "code-switching". That means that one sentence might be in one language while the next might be in another. Indeed, a sentence might even between in one and end in another. This is often conditioned by what they hear. If the story is heard in language A, it is told in language A. Zarauztarrak are not necessarily bilingual. Bilingualism implies a knowledge of two languages on more or less an equal basis. In the case of most Zarauztarrak, it is more an example "diglossia" (a lopsided knowledge of two languages, i.e. a person or society knows one language well and another imperfectly) than bilingualism. Because of centuries of neglect, decades of Francoism, many people in Zarautz speak Basque as their first language but are unable to read or write in their own native language. Their vocabulary in their native language is very narrow and confined to familiar things. If there is anything complicated or specialized, they have, up to now, always switched to Spanish. This is obviously a result of their Spanish-medium education. The same phenomenon can be seen among many Hispanics in the United States, the Welsh in Wales, Macedonian-speaking Greeks in northern Greece, Kurds in Turkey, etc.
Nowadays, young Basques can read and write Basque fluently but are subjected to intense bombardment in Spanish, nevertheless, through the mass media. Movies are always dubbed into a horrendous artificial wooden Castilian Spanish (which is still infinitely better than the even more artificial phoney Basque they use for dubbing), pop music is listened to mostly in English and Spanish, and most television stations viewed in Zarautz broadcast in Spanish. The upshot of all of this is that even Basques educated in Basque do not know how to say common words such as "aircraft carrier", "knuckles", "temple (of the head)", "oats", "caterpillar", or "velvet" yet they do know the words in Spanish!
When everything is said and done, I believe that a person who does not know both Basque and Spanish misses out on an awful lot. While someone can get by perfectly well without knowing any Basque, non-Basque-speakers do often feel left out or even marginalized. After all, those who know little or no Basque are a minority and Basque is used quite a bit.

9. What is the Basque like in Zarautz?

The Basque spoken in Zarautz is the Gipuzkoan dialect. There is definitely a Zarautz accent and everyone here can tell the difference between someone from Zarautz, Getaria, and Orio, even though they are just a few kilometres away. There are some words that only Zarauztarrak use such as "txaparroa" (swimsuit).
Basque has been heavily influenced by Spanish but over the last past two decades it has been profoundly influenced by the newly standardized Basque known as Euskara Batua (Unified Basque). Schooling and Basque-language TV have revolutionized Basque in the fields of vocabulary, grammar, indeed, even confidence in the ability of the language itself to convey any modern idea or thought.
The use of allocutive forms (aka "hika" or "hiketa") is alive and well in Zarautz Basque. This is the highly complex practice of including the person that you are talking to into your conversation. Below is a brief, quite incomplete explanation of the phenomenon.

For example, in English, we might say

1. Nepal is in a difficult situation

but we might want to bring the person your talking to more into the conversation by saying

2. You've got a difficult situation in Nepal

The difference in Basque is that they stick it all into a verb.

3. Bihar etorriko dira (they'll come tomorrow, the neutral form)

4. Bihar etorriko dituk (they'll come tomorrow, the allocutive form, literally, you will have them come tomorrow)

5. Badatoz (they're coming)

6. Bazetozek (they're coming, the "ek" marking the gender of the person being spoken to)

It might be a bit complicated but it is quite fascinating.

10. Zarautz seems to be so nice, so perfect, surely there are problems,

aren't there?

On the surface, Zarautz does seem to be perfect. There are no poor neighbourhoods or pockets of poverty to be found, the streets are well-kept, there is a plethora of manicured parks, an abundance of luxury shops, and innumerable bars and restaurants and all this against a backdrop of verdant hills and an azure sea.
However, beneath this shiny veneer, there is a dark side to those who actually live here. The worst problems are sky-high housing prices, drug use, and youth unemployment.
Nearly everybody in Zarautz lives in flats or apartments which rarely cost under 250,000 euros (over 300,000 U.S. dollars). If that were not off-putting enough, most incomes rarely top 25,000 euros. It does not take a Ph.d in Mathematics to work out that even people with good salaries are priced out of the market, even if they are married with both spouses working and making good salaries. Very often, the only way young people can make it is if they get hefty support from their parents, inherit an apartment, or if they are lucky enough to qualify for officially subsidized housing, something which is scarce indeed. Over the past 20 years, prices of flats have typically gone up nearly tenfold while incomes have risen on the average of three times.
Youth unemployment, like in much of Europe, is a big problem. The greatest problem is a lack of job stability. Often, young people are offered short-term contracts in which they are paid less than usual. It is not unusual that such contracts (known locally as "junk contracts") are renewed every six months for a period of time and then not renewed since the short-term contract is offered to another young person for tax advantages. Labour laws do not allow the companies to lay off workers easily and therefore companies are very wary of hiring workers for fear of being unable to cope with meeting the payroll during economic downturns. It is thus a chronic problem with no single, cure-all solution.
Zarautz's affluence ironically helps keep the drug problem going. Young people are often given generous allowances from their parents. Some, more than we would like, spend some of this money on drugs. As often is the case around the world, many of those who think that they are living drab, pointless, meaningless lives fall easy prey to those who entice them into taking drugs, especially those who do not have strong personalities. The area known as "the Zone" seems to be the place where many of the drugs are to be found. It is a shame that this nasty trafficking is not more effectively clamped down on and wiped out.