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Source: Felix Mugurutza.

There was a beautiful folk custom on St. John’s Day until relatively recently. People would watch and admire the sun at sunrise on the summer solstice, supposedly the day the sun was at its highest in the sky. It emerged over the horizon brighter and more striking than ever, happy to know that it was its big day.

Pascual Madoz provides the seminal reference to that age-old tradition in his Diccionario geográfico written between 1845 and 1850 and in which he gathered information from towns throughout the kingdom.  And the entry on Mount Gorbea reads: “Particularly on St. John the Baptist’s Day, large crowds usually gather on the summit at dawn to wait for the magnificent sunrise”. It was a very popular event; however, it is not reported in more recent reminiscing and ethnographic surveys.

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