Mercado de San Juan
Irún's covered market on Plaza de San Juan is the beating heart of the city's food culture, where local farmers, fishmongers and cheese vendors have traded for generations. Arrive before noon on a Saturday and you will find the stalls groaning with Basque txakoli, salt-cod, idiazabal cheese and freshly picked peppers from the Bidasoa valley.
What to buy
The ground floor fish stalls are a spectacle in themselves — whole turbots, glistening anchovies and spider crabs straight off the boats at Hondarribia sit on crushed ice just metres from the Spanish-French border.
Head upstairs for cured meats and local honey, and don't leave without a wedge of smoked idiazabal sheep's cheese, which travels home perfectly wrapped in the vendor's wax paper.
Eating around the market
The pinxto bars ringing the plaza crank up around 11 a.m., offering glasses of cold txakoli paired with anchovy-and-olive skewers for under two euros a bite.
Bar Urdanibia on the square is a reliable local favourite — order the bacalao al pil-pil and eat standing at the zinc counter like a true Irunés.
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