Donostiako Portua

This guide to Donostiako Portua in San Sebastián starts on the last night of August 1813, when British and Portuguese troops broke through the city walls after a brutal siege and their fury turned on the town itself, setting fires that burned for a week. Down at the harbor, one squat stone tower had stood since the mid-1700s as the merchants' guild house, watching over the same fishing boats and collecting harbor taxes. You'll hear how this port traces back centuries earlier still, to a medieval seafarers' brotherhood that grew rich on whaling and cod. Look at the tower against the water and picture the smoke that once filled the sky behind it.