Donostian

Donostian means "in San Sebastián" in Basque. I leave San Sebastián in two days. I have to confess that this makes me sadder than I´d expected to be. It´s been an incredibly fast two weeks. I´ve seen and done a lot and I would like to come back and live here for at least a year to really learn the language and see as much of this beautiful country as I can.

Here are some of the things I saw on a daily basis and to which I´ve grown very happily accustomed.

The railing along the long promenade above the beach is unique to the city in its shape and ornament and there are souvenir bookends and little pencil sharpeners for sale mounted by plastic replicas of its peculiar "o" shaped ballustrading.

Leaving Nº 26 Boulevard every day and turning into the alde zaharrean (Parte Vieja or Old Part), this is what I typically ran into. Small, ancient streets filled with restaurants, bars, purveyors of food and luxury items and, of course, tourists.

A beautiful old house.

A beautiful apartment building.

Everything is benevolently dominated by the Sagrado Corazon atop Mount Urgull.

Antique monuments dedicated to great Basque mariners, usually accompanied by a prayer asking Mary to intercede on behalf of the town´s sailors and spare them for their waiting families as they searched every farther and ever longer in the ocean for cod and whale.

More recently, for many decades, Donostia hosted the royal family every summer. Where they went, so went Spain´s wealthy, powerful and famous. San Sebastián is no longer host to Europe´s crème de la crème but their traces can be found in the elegance of the boulevards, the names of the most pretigious buildings and in the grandiose villas built on the best promontories of the city. Above is Miramar, an English tudor palace built by the regent Queen Maria-Cristina.

With la reina Maria-Cristina came great prosperity and the township expressed its gratitude in monuments throughout the city. The statue above was erected in 1929, the year of her death.

Another monument to the regent who saw the nation through one of its darkest years, 1898, the year Spain lost the Spanish-American War and the last of her colonies in the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico. From that point on, the Spanish have been trying to decide who they are if not a great empire. It´s a process that is still evolving as not only the Basque Country but Catalonia and Galicia make ever stronger demands for ever greater independence.

Donostia is also a modern city. Above is the Kursaal, a large exhibition, performance and conference center right on the beach at the mouth of the Urumea River.

This is where I have lived for two weeks. Maritxu and Valentin Legorburu´s spacious, airy apartment is the one on the top floor, in the center, Nº 26 Boulevard...

...Quinto Izquierda.