Why go
The story makes the cathedral more than a Gothic-style silhouette: it marks a new parish on land once described as dunes and marshes. The 1888 foundation ceremony, 1897 consecration and later completion of the tower show how the church rose alongside the expanding city.
The full story
In 1881, a new parish division answered the needs of residents in the southern part of San Sebastián. Before a permanent church could be built, worship took place in a wooden building dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus near Loiola and Príncipe streets. The city provided a site between the Urumea and La Concha in 1887. Four designs competed for the new Good Shepherd church, and the proposal by local architect Manuel de Echave was selected. Queen Regent María Cristina and the young Alfonso XIII attended the laying of the foundation stone in September 1888. Work was interrupted for a period because funds ran short, but the church was consecrated in July 1897. The tower followed in 1899. The building later changed status when San Sebastián became a diocese in the twentieth century. Interior reforms, notably in 1972, removed some earlier furnishings and renewed the floor, windows and lighting.