Motako Gaztelua

This guide to Motako Gaztelua in San Sebastián opens in the late summer of 1813, with the town below in flames after British and Portuguese troops broke through its walls and turned on the civilians the battle was meant to liberate. Up on this hilltop, first fortified centuries earlier by Sancho the Strong of Navarre, General Rey pulled his surviving French soldiers back and refused to surrender the castle along with the town. You'll hear how the two sides held their positions for another week while the city smoldered beneath them, and what finally turned sixty British guns on this same hill. Look out over the rooftops from the walls where those soldiers watched their city burn.