Calle del Urumea

The Urumea is a short, powerful river in the north of the peninsula. It rises at the Ezcurra pass in Navarre and crosses Guipúzcoa until it splits San Sebastián in two, delivering its waters to the Cantabrian Sea between Mount Urgull and Zurriola beach. It runs barely fifty kilometers, and its bridges mark the layout of the city center. The name comes from Basque and is documented in the early twelfth century. The most common reading breaks it into ur (water) and ume (offspring), with the sense of “lesser water.” At its source, in Goizueta, locals call it by another name, Errakaundi, “big stream.” The calle del Urumea belongs to the part of El Viso that names its streets after Spanish rivers and geographical features. The riverbed that gives the street its name flows hundreds of kilometers away, at the other end of the country.