Santesteban

Santesteban was once the head town of the valley of Santesteban de Lerín, originally sited between the districts of Bidaso and Berroarán. In 1421 it moved to its current position on the left bank of the Bidasoa. A century later, in June 1522, the town was burned by a coalition of French forces and Agramontese allies who were trying to restore the Albret dynasty to the Navarrese throne.

The parish church of San Pedro is baroque in style and has been heavily remodelled over the centuries. Its tower was once part of the castle of the Lerín family, and the lower section still has the original arrow slits and gun ports. Inside, the main altarpiece and the two side altarpieces are baroque, while the organ, a Cavaillé-Coll instrument from 1887, is rococo.

The porch, which opens onto Calle Parroquia, is the setting for two traditional dances during the feast of San Pedro: the Trapatán and the flag dance. On Calle Mercaderes stands a Gothic house built in an earlier century. Its entrance is an ogival arch made up of eleven voussoirs.

Above it, the first floor has mullioned, canopied windows beneath a cornice decorated with pomegranate motifs, a pattern repeated on the second floor. Nearby, Casa Erraztunea was the home of the composer Joaquín Larregla. The Intzakardi park was laid out on a former cemetery where English soldiers killed fighting the French were buried.

It is planted with various trees, with large plane trees among the most prominent. At one end of the park, the Galbaraialde river meets the Baztan to form the Bidasoa. Santesteban also sat on the route of the Bidasoa railway, known locally as the Tren Chiquito, which linked Irún in Gipuzkoa with Elizondo in Navarra across 51 kilometres of narrow-gauge track.

The line began as a mining railway connecting the mines at Endarlaza with Irún, with construction led by civil engineer Ramón de Aguinaga Arrechea. It opened in 1898 with a track gauge of 915 millimetres. When the line was extended to Elizondo, inaugurated in 1916, the gauge was widened to one metre and the service expanded to carry passengers.

The line closed on 31 December 1956. After decades of abandonment, a greenway was created along 44 kilometres of the old route between Behovia in Gipuzkoa and Legasa in Navarra, opening on 20 December 2013.