San Sebastián’s Parte Vieja occupies the ground between Mount Urgull and the bay, the core of a town founded for maritime trade and defense. Sancho VI of Navarre granted a charter around 1180, encouraging settlers and commerce through a port connected with Bayonne and northern Europe. The town later passed to Castile and grew through fishing, shipbuilding, whaling, privateering, and trade. Its position near the French frontier gave it commercial opportunity but also made it a military objective, so walls and the fortress on Urgull increasingly enclosed the settlement.

Fires, sieges, and changing dynastic conflicts repeatedly shaped the old town. San Sebastián’s ships participated in Atlantic ventures, while local sailors pursued whales and cod as far as northern waters. The fortified port served the Spanish monarchy during wars with France and other powers. In 1794, during the War of the Pyrenees, French revolutionary troops occupied the town after a negotiated surrender. Control changed again during the Napoleonic era, when French forces held San Sebastián as part of their occupation of Spain.

The defining catastrophe came in 1813. British and Portuguese troops under the Duke of Wellington besieged the French garrison during the Peninsular War. After an unsuccessful assault in July, Allied forces stormed the breached walls on 31 August. The fighting was followed by widespread killing, rape, looting, and a fire that destroyed most of the town, even though the attackers had arrived as opponents of French occupation. Only a small group of buildings escaped, including houses along the street now called 31 de Agosto in memory of the disaster. The French garrison in the upper fortress surrendered in September.

Residents decided to rebuild on the same site. A more regular street plan replaced much of the earlier fabric, giving today’s Parte Vieja its predominantly nineteenth-century appearance despite its medieval origins. The city’s walls were demolished in 1863 after San Sebastián ceased to function as a frontier fortress. Expansion southward followed, and royal patronage, seaside tourism, and new transport helped create the Belle Époque resort beyond the old quarter. The Parte Vieja became the historic and social nucleus within a much larger urban landscape.

Twentieth-century political conflict, including the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship, affected the city and the public expression of Basque identity. In more recent decades the old town became internationally known for pintxos bars, gastronomic societies, festivals, and commemorations, while visitor pressure challenged residential life. Its narrow streets and churches are therefore not the remains of an untouched medieval town. They are principally the product of collective reconstruction after the violence of 1813, framed by surviving topography and later cultural traditions. Remembering the assault alongside the celebrated food culture gives Parte Vieja its full historical depth: a fortified port destroyed in war, rebuilt by its inhabitants, and continually reinvented as the civic heart of San Sebastián.

Commemoration of 1813 has itself changed over time. Military histories often emphasized the successful siege, while local memory preserved the suffering of civilians and the work of rebuilding. Public ceremonies and historical research increasingly acknowledge violence committed by the Allied troops after entry. That fuller account prevents liberation from becoming a simple triumphal story and explains why 31 August remains both a street name and a civic wound.