Santurtzi (Santurce)

The Bilbao ferry docks at 07:30 and, by 08:15, the first Portsmouth foot-passengers are already nursing cortados on Santurtzi’s stone pier. No shuttle buses, no twenty-euro taxi—just a fifteen-minute stroll past the net lockers and the fish-market ramp. The town smells of diesel, salt and yesterday’s grilled sardines: an honest introduction to a place that still earns its living from the sea.

Santurtzi is not a fishing village that time forgot. Forty-six thousand people live here, stacked up the hillsides that squeeze the Nervión estuary into its final mile before the Cantabrian Sea. Apartment blocks rise behind the quay, commuter trains rattle through every ten minutes, and the red-and-white gantry of the old shipyard still cranes over the water like a rusting giraffe. Yet the harbour remains the natural centre. At dawn the trawlers slide in, floodlights on, gulls wheeling. By nine the auction hall is done and fork-lifts are shifting crates of hake and anchovy while retired arrantzales swap newspapers at Bar Toki. If you want postcard perfection, look elsewhere. If you want to watch a place clock on, pull up a plastic chair.

A promenade that changes with the tide

The seafront walk strings together two distinct beaches, a marina and a succession of granite breakwaters. On the landward side, mansion blocks from the 1920s share pavement space with brutalist council flats painted salmon and turquoise. Outwardly, the architecture is nothing special; what shifts is the light. Morning sun picks out the green glass of the estuary, but when the tide turns the whole waterfront goes pewter, and you remember how quickly the Bay of Biscay can sulk.

Playa del Sagrado Corazón is the town’s main sweep of sand—barely 400 m, but cleaned daily and patrolled in summer. Paddle-boarders launch here, yet the swell can turn nasty after lunch when the easterly levante funnels down the estuary. Locals advise swimming before 11:00 or not at all; the red flag stays up for days in October. Behind the beach, the Paseo Marítimo offers the usual Spanish line-up: chiringuito bars, concrete benches, elderly men playing petanca with the concentration of chess grandmasters. The difference is price—€1.80 for a caña, half what you’ll pay in central Bilbao ten minutes away.

Carry on eastward and the promenade climbs onto a low cliff. Here the stone gives way to weathered timber decking that rattles under every footstep. You’ll pass the tiny 1856 chapel of the Virgin of Carmel, locked except for the fishermen’s blessing each 16 July, and arrive at Campa de los Ingleses, a grassy platform designed by a Glaswegian ship-builder in 1900 for the Basque steelworkers’ football pitch. The name stuck. These days it is simply the best free viewpoint on the coast: freighters gliding upriver to Bilbao, the green ridge of Monte Serantes closing the horizon, and, on a clear evening, the Picos de Europa showing their snow like streaks of icing sugar.

Up the hill where the town exhales

Santurtzi’s streets tilt steeply from the water. Within two blocks the smell of seaweed is replaced by laundry detergent and diesel heaters. Maps call the old quarter Cascos Antiguos; locals just say arriba. Cobbles are polished to glass by winter rain, so wear shoes with grip. Halfway up, Calle La Cruz narrows into a tunnel of pastel houses where every balcony sprouts satellite dishes and geraniums in equal number. Pause outside number 47: a ceramic plaque marks the birthplace of José Antonio de la Loza, the 19th-century admiral who mapped the Strait of Magellan. Few visitors notice; passers-by use it as a leaning post for grocery bags.

The summit reward is Parque de la Providencia, a pocket of pines and camellias that feels 300 m above sea level but is only 85 m. From the bandstand you can trace the entire grid: the estuary becoming bay, the container cranes of Zierbena in the middle distance, the apartment blocks stepping uphill like spectators in a stadium. In February camellias drop pink petals onto the benches; July brings shade and a breeze strong enough to lift a paperback from your lap. Mobile reception drops in the lee of the hill—some locals come here precisely to avoid WhatsApp.

What to eat, when to eat it

Season dictates the menu. From May to August the sardinada season turns the portside into an open-air barbecue every weekend. Stalls charge €6 for six sardines and a fistful of bread; cider is splashed into plastic cups with theatrical height. British visitors often find the fish oilier than the cleaned-up supermarket version—ask for “poco hechas” if you prefer them under-done. Out of season, the same coals roast txipirones (baby squid) or bogavante slipper lobster; prices stay sensible because neighbours, not tourists, keep the vendors honest.

Inside restaurants, order by weight. A ración of grilled monkfish cheeks (kokotxas) feeds two and costs around €18; the texture is closer to scallop than cod. Txangurro, spider-crab baked with brandy and onions, arrives in its own shell—crack, scoop, mop with bread. If that feels too rich, most bars still do a classic Gilda: olive, anchovy and pickled chilli on a toothpick. One bite and you’ll know why the Basques named it after Rita Hayworth—sharp, salty, impossible to ignore.

Lunch service shuts at 15:30 sharp. Kitchens reopen for dinner no earlier than 20:30; the four-hour gap is not a gimmick but the staff’s only break. Plan accordingly or you’ll be foraging for crisps in the Opencor kiosk like the night-shift dockers.

Getting out on (and in) the water

The Museo del Pescador occupies a red brick warehouse built for salt cod in 1918. Inside, trawler radios crackle, a retired net-maker demonstrates knots, and children can heave an aluminium trainera oar that weighs more than they do. Entry is €5; joint tickets with the Agurtza, a 1943 wooden fishing boat tied alongside, cost €7. On Saturdays the crew cast a trawl net into the harbour so visitors can see what scrapes the bottom—usually more plastic spoons than fish, a blunt ecological lesson.

Sightseeing trips run twice daily in summer on the El Bote catamaran. The €18 ticket hugs the coast for 90 minutes: iron-ore loaders at Puerto de Musel, the 1890s lighthouse at Caballo*, and, on calm days, a pod of pilot whales that patrol the 50 m depth line. Take a light jacket even in July; the captain keeps going unless waves top the rail.

Visiting yachts can tie up in the Club Marítimo for €25 a night including water and Wi-Fi; book by WhatsApp the day before. Showers cost €2 in tokens sold at the bar—expect hot water only if the dockhands aren’t washing down the deck first.

The practical bit, woven in

Metro Line 2 from Bilbao’s Casco Viejo station reaches Santurtzi in 20 minutes. Buy a Barik card at the airport machines (€3 deposit) and load €10; each hop costs €1.64. Avoid weekday mornings 08:00-09:00 when every carriage is shoulder-to-shoulder with shipyard staff. Last trains back depart at 23:05 Sunday-Thursday, 00:45 Friday-Saturday—miss them and the night bus takes an hour.

Rain arrives horizontally here; the seafront offers zero shelter. Even on a blue-sky morning pack a pac-a-mac. Parking in Santurtzi is warfare: blue-zone bays max out at two hours, the underground Arenal car park charges €2 per hour and closes at 22:00. If you’re day-tripping from Bilbao, the metro is faster, cheaper and kinder to the blood pressure.

When to come, when to stay away

Spring and early autumn give the best ratio of daylight to rainfall. In May the Castañas flowers scent the upper streets and you’ll share the promenade with pram-pushing grandparents, not summer schools. Late July turns town into a spill-over for Bilbao’s Semana Grande; accommodation sells out and bars hike pintxo prices 20%. Winter is quiet, occasionally wild: Atlantic lows send waves over the sea wall, drenching the road and closing the beaches. The council resets the storm-damage budget every January; photographers love it, umbrellas surrender immediately.

Two hours is enough to taste salt on your lips and photograph the cranes, but not to understand why people stay. Stay for lunch, ride the metro back at dusk, and you’ll have seen a slice of Basque life that package coaches bypass on their way to prettier, emptier villages. Santurtzi offers no fairy-tale, only the daily rhythm of tide, shift-siren and cider pour—sometimes that is exactly what a traveller needs.