Zumaya

Zumaia (Spanish: Zumaya) is a municipality in Gipuzkoa at the mouth of the Urola river on the Basque coast. The town is defined above all by its flysch cliffs, a geological formation where millions of years of sedimentary rock strata have been compressed, tilted, and exposed by erosion into perfectly layered vertical bands visible along the cliff faces of Algorri beach.

The flysch sequence at Zumaia includes the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, making it a site of international scientific importance for the study of the mass extinction event that ended the age of dinosaurs. The cliffs can be accessed by boat or on foot at low tide.

The old town has a traditional Basque character with the church of San Pedro on the main square, and the coastal path from Zumaia toward Deba is one of the most scenically dramatic sections of the Camino del Norte.