Most English guides to Hondarribia, the walled fishing town on the Basque coast where the Bidasoa river meets France, describe the same postcard: colorful balconies in the Marina district, a medieval old town behind stone walls, a castle turned five-star hotel. What almost none of them mention is who built that castle first. The original fortress at Hondarribia was raised by a king of Navarra, and the town itself belonged to the Kingdom of Navarra until Castile took it by force around the year 1200, specifically to reach the French coast that Navarra had been sitting in front of.
That detail matters beyond trivia. It explains why medieval Navarra, a kingdom that once controlled territory from the Pyrenees toward the Mediterranean, ended up landlocked for the rest of its history, and why a town most itineraries treat as a Gipuzkoan side trip has a documented, municipally-recorded connection to the region an hour’s drive inland. Hondarribia did not start as a Basque coastal curiosity. It started as Navarra’s fortress on its own shoreline, before that shoreline was taken away.
This article draws on Hondarribia’s own municipal archive and published town history, cross-checked against independent heritage and encyclopedic sources for every date and name, and on the town’s own tourism board for its present-day gastronomy and neighborhoods.
A Navarrese Fortress, Taken by Castile to Reach France
According to Hondarribia’s own municipal history archive, the town’s first fortress was raised by a Navarrese king known as Sancho Abarca, who ruled in the late 900s, and later strengthened by another king of Navarra, Sancho VII el Fuerte, in the years before 1200. For roughly two centuries, the settlement that would become Hondarribia was a Navarrese possession, one of the kingdom’s outposts on the water.
That changed fast. In the year 1200, Alfonso VIII of Castile set out to conquer Álava and Gipuzkoa, both then part of the Kingdom of Navarra, because they stood between his kingdom and Aquitaine on the French coast, territory he claimed through inheritance. Taking Gipuzkoa gave Castile its land route north. It also cut Navarra off from this stretch of coastline for good. Alfonso VIII moved quickly to secure his new territory: he confirmed Hondarribia’s town charter in 1203, the date now treated as the town’s founding, even though the settlement itself was a Navarrese foundation from a few years earlier.
The story did not end cleanly there. In 1256, Alfonso X of Castile briefly handed San Sebastián and Hondarribia back to Navarra “with all their revenues from sea and land,” in the wording preserved in the town’s own archive, before the arrangement reverted not long after. Hondarribia’s neighbor down the coast has its own version of this same throughline. San Sebastián, as covered in our guide to why San Sebastián was never just a resort town, was founded by a different Navarrese king, Sancho VI, and briefly served as Navarra’s outlet to the sea under a 13th-century royal marriage pact. Hondarribia’s version of the same story runs earlier and lasted longer, and it is the more direct case: a fortress a Navarrese king actually built, on land Navarra actually lost.
The loss reshaped the kingdom permanently. Navarra’s borders settled into the landlocked shape they still hold today, wedged between the Pyrenees and the Ebro, a geography covered in full in our piece on how Navarra compresses alpine peaks and a real desert into a hundred kilometers. The kingdom itself did not disappear for another three centuries, a history detailed in our article on how the Kingdom of Navarra outlived its own conquest by 329 years, but it never got its coastline back.
The Siege of 1638 and the Alarde That Still Marks It
Hondarribia’s fortress earned its keep four centuries later, in an episode with no connection to Navarra at all, but one that defines the town today. In the summer of 1638, during the Thirty Years’ War, a French army of roughly 18,000 men under the Prince of Condé laid siege to the town. Hondarribia’s defenders numbered close to 1,100, soldiers from the castle garrison and armed townspeople combined, after reinforcements slipped in on a high tide before the siege closed.
Before the blockade sealed shut, women from the town carried the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe down from her mountain sanctuary to the parish church, and the town made a vow: if it survived, it would keep a feast day every year in her honor. The siege ground on for 69 days. French guns fired an estimated 16,000 rounds into the walled town. A relief army finally broke the siege on September 7, 1638, and of Hondarribia’s roughly 1,100 defenders, only about 400 were left standing. For its defense, the Spanish crown granted the town the formal title “Most noble, most loyal and most valiant city of Fuenterrabía,” using the town’s historic Spanish name.
The following year, on September 8, 1639, the town processed to the Guadalupe sanctuary to fulfil its vow. That procession grew into the modern Alarde, a parade of historic military companies held every September 8 since, with only rare interruptions across nearly four centuries. The castle that hosted the defense, the Castillo de Carlos V, still stands at the center of the old town. Its present facade dates to renovations ordered after Emperor Charles V’s own visit in 1539, and in 1968 the fortress was converted into a Parador, part of Spain’s network of state-run historic hotels, by the architect Manuel Sáenz de Vicuña.
Where Two Kingdoms Made Peace, and a King Married by Proxy
Hondarribia’s border position paid off once more, twenty years after the siege. After a century and a half of intermittent war between Spain and France, the two crowns negotiated the Peace of the Pyrenees here in 1659, fixing the mountain range itself as the formal frontier between them. The talks took place on the Isla de los Faisanes, a small island of shared sovereignty in the middle of the Bidasoa, reached by boat from Hondarribia on one side and Hendaye, France, on the other.
Getting the two sides to agree took time. Per Hondarribia’s own municipal archive, negotiators held 24 separate conference sessions on the island over roughly three months before the treaty was finally signed, with a formal Te Deum sung afterward in Hondarribia’s parish church. The peace was sealed the following year with one of the era’s stranger royal weddings. On June 6, 1660, Louis XIV of France married María Teresa of Austria, daughter of Spain’s Felipe IV, in a proxy ceremony inside that same parish church, with the groom standing in for himself by substitute while he waited across the border in Saint-Jean-de-Luz.
The days around the wedding produced two small, well-documented human moments that rarely make it into travel copy. The next day, Felipe IV crossed to the Isla de los Faisanes to see his sister, the queen mother of France, for the first time in 25 years. And according to the same municipal account, an impatient 21-year-old Louis XIV, unwilling to simply wait in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, rode roughly 18 kilometers to the island himself to catch a glimpse of his new wife before the marriage was even formally completed. It is a small, specific claim to fame most coastal day-trip guides skip entirely: one of French history’s most consequential royal marriages took place inside a town most visitors treat today as a lunch stop.
La Marina, the Pintxos, and Navarra’s Own Chefs Today
None of this history requires a costume to appreciate on a modern visit. Hondarribia’s old town sits behind its medieval walls, centered on Calle Mayor and the Plaza de Armas, a short walk from the Castillo de Carlos V. Outside the walls, toward the water, is La Marina, also known as Portu Auzoa, the former fishermen’s quarter and now the town’s densest concentration of bars and restaurants. According to Hondarribia’s own tourism board, the neighborhood’s famously colorful balconies trace back to a practical habit rather than a design scheme: fishermen historically repainted their houses with the same paint left over from their boats.
Hondarribia’s food culture has a direct, present-day tie back to Navarra, distinct from the medieval one. The Euskal Herria Pintxo Championship, founded in Hondarribia in 2006 and run every October by the town’s own Hospitality Association, draws competing chefs from across the Basque Country, Iparralde (the French Basque Country), and Navarra itself. It is one of the few points where Navarra’s kitchens and Hondarribia’s kitchens meet on a stage every single year. Visitors can also walk to Mount Jaizkibel behind the town, home to the Guadalupe sanctuary tied to the 1638 vow, or out to Cabo Higuer, where the Bidasoa estuary opens into the Bay of Biscay. Jaizkibel has an older, darker footnote too: in 1611, the Inquisition opened a related, smaller round of the Zugarramurdi witch trials here, targeting alleged akelarres in a community where the men were often away for months at a time on Basque whaling voyages.
Hondarribia sits roughly 100 kilometers from Pamplona, a drive of around an hour and a half on the AP-15 and A-15 corridor. Bus and rail options exist but run considerably longer, since there is no direct fast rail connection between the two cities.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Hondarribia in the Basque Country or Navarra?
Hondarribia is in Gipuzkoa, one of the historical territories of today’s Basque Autonomous Community. It is not part of modern Navarra. Historically, though, the town’s original fortress was built by kings of Navarra, and the settlement belonged to the Kingdom of Navarra until Castile conquered it around 1200.
Why did Castile want Hondarribia?
According to Hondarribia’s own municipal history, Castile’s king Alfonso VIII conquered Gipuzkoa, including Hondarribia, in 1200 because it blocked his kingdom’s land route to Aquitaine on the French coast, territory he claimed by inheritance. Taking the territory gave Castile that route and cut the Kingdom of Navarra off from this part of the coastline.
What is the Alarde in Hondarribia?
The Alarde is an annual parade of historic military companies held every September 8, commemorating the lifting of a French siege of the town in 1638 after 69 days. It grew out of a religious vow the town made to the Virgin of Guadalupe during the siege and has been observed most years since 1639.
How far is Hondarribia from Pamplona?
Hondarribia is roughly 100 kilometers from Pamplona, generally about an hour and a half by car via the AP-15 and A-15 motorway corridor. Bus and train options run considerably longer, since there is no direct fast rail line connecting the two cities.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.