Walking out further, I passed the town's two natural tidal pools that fill up with seawater and grateful swimmers on hot summer days. Down a steep street leading down to the sea, I reached the gothic arches of the Antigua Lonja, an old fish market standing at the edge of the harbour just as it did in the 15th Century. Tucked along a residential street, I passed the stone façade of the Arrietakua Palace, once home to the ship builder Antonio de Gaztañeta, whose designs revolutionised the Spanish fleet. (A painting depicting his death is on display in Madrid's Prado Museum). In the town square stood a statue of Cosme Damián Churruca y Elorza, an admiral of the Spanish Armada who died fighting in the Battle of Trafalgar. As I walked through the town, an M C Escher-like maze of stone stairways and zig-zagging narrow cobbled streets, I found mementos of the town's distinguished seafaring past scattered throughout – many of them open to public viewing.Īt the corner of one street was an 18th-Century Baroque mansion built by José Montalivet y Forjado, a famous captain and naval engineer. I was in Mutriku to find out more about this latest chapter in the Basques' long and prosperous history with the ocean. In 2020, the plant hit a major milestone, producing two gigawatts of cumulative electricity, a record for any wave plant and an example of the role marine power could play in the global transition towards clean energy. Harnessing the force of the waves, the plant's 16 turbines generate up to 296 kilowatts of electricity, enough to power around 250 homes and cut 600 tonnes of carbon emissions each year. In 2011, the town installed the Mutriku Wave Energy Plant, the first commercial wave power plant in Europe. But while the ocean remains a source of pleasure and income for locals, it's now serving a new purpose: as an immense source of power. Families splashed around in natural tidal pools, cooling off from the midday heat. "It is a history of fishermen, navigators, sailors men and women whose lives unfolded in this environment."įrom the sea wall at the mouth of the bay, I watched as a team of rowers, lined up in a trainera (a streamlined sporting boat once used to hunt fish and whales), powered out of the port into the glistening Cantabrian Sea, past criss-crossing jet skis and a yacht sailing lazily back into harbour. Mutriku is "one of the best-preserved medieval towns in the Basque Country and its entire history has been linked to the sea," said Violeta Bandrés, a guide at the Mutriku Tourism Office. Mutriku's whalers were such renowned experts that as early as the 13th Century, the Spanish crown demanded a whale from the town as an annual tribute. The products they brought back fuelled leather industries in Mutriku and across Europe. Sailors from Mutriku ventured as far as the Gulf of St Lawrence to hunt seals, whales and cod. Formed as a fishing village more than 800 years ago, Mutriku grew alongside Basque commerce through the Middle Ages to become a thriving port, home to generations of fisherfolk, traders, shipbuilders and whalers. The coastline here is a geological marvel, created by powerful storms and relentless waves that left behind flowing, jagged layers of fine shale known as flysch that stretch out into the ocean like pages of an ancient book.įor centuries, the same ocean has enriched residents of this coastal town. It sits wedged into a bay carved out of the rugged, steep cliffs of Spain's northern coast, roughly 50km north-east of Bilbao. The Basque town of Mutriku owes its soul to the sea.
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