Where to Stay in Getxo, Euskal Autonomia Erkidegoa

What is Getxo known for?

Big houses set Getxo apart from the works towns of Greater Bilbao, and the Palacio San Joseren, Casa Amorotoena, Casa Izpegi and Casa Senditzuegi still line its streets as private architecture rather than public monument. The Church of Andra Mari holds the older parish. It is the third largest municipality of Biscay.

Sport takes up much of the rest, at Campo Municipal de Gobela and the Zona deportiva de Sarriena, while the Basque Museum of the History of Medicine and Science gives the town an unusual collection. Martiartu Tower predates all of it.

What are the main landmarks in Getxo?

Martiartu Tower is the oldest thing standing. The Church of Andra Mari and the Church of San Jorge divide the parishes between them, while Palacio San Joseren, Casa Amorotoena, Casa Izpegi and Casa Senditzuegi carry the domestic architecture. The Basque Museum of the History of Medicine and Science is the odd one out.

Sport has Campo Municipal de Gobela and the Zona deportiva de Sarriena. Beyond the municipal line stand the Basilica of Santa María and the Rialia Museum of Industry in Portugalete, the Santurtzi Maritime Museum and the Church of Santa María in Sestao.

What is the history of Getxo?

The tower came first. Martiartu Tower belongs to the age of fortified house-towers in Biscay, when families held ground rather than trade, and the Casa Torre de Salazar survives from the same period among the neighbouring towns. Around the Church of Andra Mari a farming parish worked the ground for centuries, and the Church of San Jorge serves another quarter of the same municipality.

Industry arrived on the doorstep. The furnaces, yards and cooperative societies that made Sestao and Portugalete into working towns of Greater Bilbao passed Getxo by, and the municipality took the residential part instead. Palacio San Joseren, Casa Amorotoena, Casa Izpegi and Casa Senditzuegi belong to that wealthier settlement.

Getxo grew into the third largest municipality of Biscay on that pattern, an affluent residential town rather than a manufacturing one, and it stayed inside Greater Bilbao without becoming a works town. The record of the other half sits nearby. Monument to Evaristo de Churruca and Monument to Víctor Chávarri, the cooperative halls of El Progreso sozietate kooperatiboa and Villa Nueva Kooperatiba, and the Rialia Museum of Industry all keep the industrial century.

The Basque Museum of the History of Medicine and Science came out of a different tradition again.

Where is Getxo?

Getxo occupies a compact municipality of Biscay within Greater Bilbao, the third largest of the province, with its built ground running almost without a break into the towns beside it. Portugalete and Santurtzi sit nearest. The Basque Country holds it, and Spain beyond that, but the working geography is the conurbation: Sestao, Portugalete, Santurtzi and Getxo strung along one continuous belt of Biscay.

Green survives at Campo Municipal de Gobela and the Zona deportiva de Sarriena more than in open country. Bosque de la Vida belongs to the same belt.

What is the climate of Getxo?

Nothing here gets extreme. Biscay sits in the temperate band, and the weather that reaches Getxo comes damp and grey more often than hard, so the green at the Zona deportiva de Sarriena and Campo Municipal de Gobela holds through the year. Winters stay soft across the Basque Country, and summers rarely reach the heat that inland Spain takes for granted.

Rain is the constant, spread thin across the months rather than gathered into one season, and the ground around Getxo stays green because of it.

How do you get to Getxo?

Getxo is reached through Greater Bilbao, of which it forms the residential end, and the built ground runs unbroken from Sestao and Portugalete to the municipal line. Santurtzi lies on the same run. Nothing about the approach is complicated: the conurbation's own network carries people between the towns of Biscay, and Getxo is one stop within it rather than a destination apart.

Campo Municipal de Gobela marks one edge of it.