Leioa (Lejona)

The 15-minute metro ride from Bilbao’s cavernous Moyúa station drops you in a place where the ticket barriers open straight onto a lawn. That single detail tells you most of what you need to know about Leioa: the city is close enough to feel the capital’s pulse, but its default soundtrack is still a mower rather than a mopeder.

A Suburb That Never Needed a Centre

Leioa never grew around a medieval plaza. It expanded in the 1970s when Bilbao’s middle classes wanted semidetached houses, safe cycle lanes and a university within walking distance. The result is a grid of leafy residential streets stitched together by pocket parks and bus lanes. Expect mock-Tudor gables beside Basque stone, roundabouts with sculptures you can’t quite interpret, and pavements wide enough for three abreast – a novelty in Spain.

The obvious starting point is Palacio Artaza, a 1903 manor built by a shipping magnate who wanted a country retreat “within earshot of the sea”. The mansion itself is now an events venue, so unless you’re invited to a wedding you’ll only see the exterior: mustard brick, wrought-iron balconies, a clock that stopped during Storm Klaus in 2009 and was never restarted. The surrounding park is more useful – 9 ha of lawns, magnolia avenues and a duck pond that fills with lost footballs after Saturday matches. Bench plaques commemorate local worthies; the newest one thanks “Margaret from Manchester for teaching us gin & tonics”.

Behind the palace the path joins the Gobela River for five minutes of shade before spitting you out at Parque de Ondiz. Basque mothers treat the park like an outdoor nursery: toddlers pedal past while students from the adjoining campus rehearse protest chants for the following week. The lake is small enough to throw a stone across, but a pair of resident swans have perfected the art of hissing at anyone who tries.

What the Campus Adds (and Takes Away)

The University of the Basque Country fills the eastern third of Leioa. During term-time 30,000 undergraduates swell the population and keep three pintxo bars open until 2 a.m. on a Tuesday. British postgrads come for the Erasmus exchange and stay because rent is half the price of Bilbao’s old town. Walk the central plaza at 11 p.m. and you’ll hear as much English as Euskera, plus the clatter of table-tennis tournaments that run on generators during fresher’s week.

Yet the moment exams finish the place empties. June through September the cafés close, the bookshop shutters and security guards outnumber civilians. If you’re visiting in summer, treat the campus as a quiet arboretum: breeze-block faculties wrapped in ivy, brutalist lecture halls reflected in ornamental ponds, a 1970s library that smells of coffee grounds and ambition. Pick up an English-language events sheet from the foyer; even out of term there are free film screenings most Thursdays.

Reaching the Coast Without the Crowds

Leioa isn’t on the coast, but it behaves like it is. Every 20 minutes bus A3451 leaves the health-centre stop and climbs over the A-8 flyover, delivering you to Playa de la Galea in eight minutes. The sand is dark, almost charcoal, and the Atlantic stays stubbornly cool until late July. What you get in return is space: on a weekday morning you can walk half a mile and share the view only with surfers in thick neoprene. British families base themselves here because the water is cleaner than Bilbao’s city beaches and the kiosk still sells proper Cadbury’s at airport prices.

If you prefer your sea with a marina and ice-cream parlours, stay on the bus for three more stops to Plentzia. The estuary walls turn the village into a natural amphitheatre; at low tide children chase crabs across the mud while grandparents play petanca beneath the plane trees. Either way, carry a Barik card (€3 refundable deposit at airport machines) and the return journey costs €1.92 – cheaper than a single stop on the London Underground.

Eating: Between Sandwich Bars and Michelin

Leioa’s culinary spectrum runs from student budget to Michelin star without much in between. The cheapest calories are found in the covered walkway beside the economics block: a paper-thin slice of tortilla and a caña set you back €2.50. Menus are written in Euskera first, so “antxoa” is anchovy and “txipiroi” is squid; Google Translate’s camera function prevents accidental ordering of tripe.

For something more composed, book ahead at Asador Arriaga, ten minutes’ walk from the metro in the neighbouring parish of San Ignacio. The dining room is oak-panelled, the wine list heavy on Rioja Alavesa, and the chuleton (T-bone for two) arrives sizzling on a board the size of a laptop. Dinner for two with wine creeps towards €90, still £30 less than an equivalent steak in Borough Market.

Sunday lunchtime is the danger zone. By 3 p.m. the last proper restaurant is mopping the floor and the only option is a kebab van outside the Eroski hypermarket. Stock up on Manchego and baguette before Saturday midnight if you’re planning a picnic.

Getting In, Getting Out

Leioa sits at kilometre 8 on the A-8 corniche. Drivers disembarking at Santander ferry port reach the suburb in 55 minutes on the autopista, but weekday mornings start queuing at 07:45 and don’t loosen until 10. The smarter move is to park beside the metro (free at weekends, €1.20 weekdays) and ride into Bilbao. Trains run every six minutes at peak, every fifteen off-peak, and the last service back from Abando is 23:07. Miss it and a taxi is a fixed €35 – book Taxi Bilbao online to avoid surge pricing.

Cyclists get their own lane the full length of the coast-to-city cycle path; the 11 km ride to Guggenheim takes 35 minutes and is almost flat. On windy days you share the route with rowers wheeling their sculls down to the estuary.

When to Come, When to Skip

May and late-September offer 22 °C afternoons, university buzz and hotel rates 30 % below July. Rain is possible any day – this is the Basque Country – but showers pass quickly and leave the parks smelling of eucalyptus. November through February turns damp and gloomy; the campus fountains switch off, beaches empty and most visitors are better off in central Bilbao where museums stay open.

Avoid the final week of August when the local fiestas fill the streets with brass bands and midnight firecrackers. Accommodation sells out nine months ahead and what’s left is priced like Cannes. Equally, don’t expect a quaint village fête: the programme is karaoke, paella for 2,000 and fairground rides that look last inspected in 1998.

The Honest Verdict

Leioa will never make the cover of a Spanish tourism brochure, and that is precisely its appeal. It is a place where you can sleep cheaply, park freely and still be photographing the Guggenheim twenty minutes after finishing breakfast. Treat it as a base rather than a bucket-list stop, enjoy the parks when the sun appears and let the metro do the heavy lifting. If you want Moorish palaces or orange-tree squares, stay on the train to Granada. If you want a glimpse of how ordinary Basques live when the tour buses have gone elsewhere, get off at Leioa and look for the lawn by the ticket barrier.