Cliffs, beaches, huge marshes and a large bay open to a sea full of first-class anchovies are watched by the lighthouse, Faro del Caballo, whose location is well worth visiting. All of this and more is what Santoña has, and all this and more is what the Romans loved, who, in the first century, set up a magnificent port here to trade with Gaul.
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Cliffs, beaches, huge marshes and a large bay open to a sea full of first-class anchovies are watched by the lighthouse, Faro del Caballo, whose location is well worth visiting. All of this and more is what Santoña has, and all this and more is what the Romans loved, who, in the first century, set up a magnificent port here to trade with Gaul.
But they weren’t the first ones to fall in love with the place. Thousands of years earlier the area had already been populated by people who left their trail in several caves.
Once Rome’s time had passed, the Visigoths arrived, who were able to settle here while the rest of the peninsula was being invaded by the followers of the Prophet. The Muslims did not dare with the Cantabrian Mountains, so in this region, there was some tranquillity. That is the reason why there is hardly any information about the village of Santoña until the year 1038.
On that date, Abbot Paterno brings new life to the primitive and small community that, apparently, was here. He orders to restore the old monastery, promotes the repopulation and introduces Santoña in history with all the honours. From those medieval times there is still, for example, the Church of Santa María del Puerto, erected in the thirteenth century over the remains of a much older one.
The Modern Age had already started when Satoña got involved in the discovery adventure of Columbus, and precisely at the hand of a Santoña man, Juan de la Cosa, we owe the first map of the world that included the newly found American lands. In fact, in the church at the end of the Paseo Marítimo, you will be able to see the Virgen Santa Maria del Puerto. It is the original figure that Juan de la Cosa took with him in his caravel, the Santa María, on his way to discover the new continent. You are, indeed, before the statue that seems to be responsible for that caravel to be called The Santa María, being also the first image of the Virgin to set foot on American lands.
But modernity was not going to bring peace to the village. With such an interesting location and such a lovely port, the site was too tempting for the French, and in the seventeenth century, there was no choice but to build the forts of San Martín and San Carlos to protect the bay. The troops of the neighbours came back again in the following century, and they constructed another fort which today is called Napoleon’s fortress.
Military bastions aside, you must see the Palace of the Marquis of Manzanedo and take a long walk around this town, which until well into the nineteenth century was full of orange and lemon groves.
And we finish off with a brief anecdote about the village: it was 1933 when Charles Lindbergh made an emergency landing in this bay while he was travelling around the world with his wife. The thing was a real event for Santoña, so much so that the city council paid tribute to the aviator with a banquet that took half of the municipal budget. We must understand that not every day the first person who crossed the Atlantic by plane lands in town …
