The Mystery of Santa Clara Island: Chronicles of Plague, Tragic Love, and Sunken Secrets

For the reader of www.descubredonostia.com, an immersion into the enigmas hidden within the jewel of La Concha Bay.

The mystery of Santa Clara Island begins in plain sight. Every city has its secrets, but few display them as brazenly every day as San Sebastián. Right there, in the heart of La Concha bay, stands Santa Clara Island. At first glance, it’s a perfect postcard: a green silhouette crowned by a white lighthouse, framed by the Igeldo and Urgull mountains. A place that invites you for a dip at its ephemeral beach, the one that appears and disappears like a magician’s trick. But that is only the first page of a much darker book.

Our investigation begins here, in this seemingly idyllic setting. We are presented with a case with multiple layers: an initial note that speaks of a “lazaretto” in the 16th century and a “romantic tragedy” of a lighthouse keeper in 1930. But as in any good mystery novel, the first clues are often red herrings that hide a deeper, more moving truth. We are detectives of history, and our goal is to unearth the secrets that the waves have tried to erode for centuries. What does Santa Clara Island truly hide? Join us in this investigation.

The Santa Clara File: The First Clue, Whispers of the Plague

Our first thread takes us to the 16th century. The city of San Sebastián, like so many ports in Europe, lived under the shadow of an invisible terror: the plague. Panic was the air one breathed, and no measure was enough to contain the disease. It was then that the city’s eyes turned to the island. Due to its natural isolation, Santa Clara was designated as a lazaretto, a name that sounds archaic today but was then synonymous with exile and, often, death.

Imagine the scene: boats crossing the bay, not with tourists, but with the sick, separated from their families to protect the community. The island, so beautiful from the shore, became a quarantine prison. Its coasts, which today invite recreation, were the last vision of home for many. Historical sources confirm this grim use, adding that it also served as a cemetery for “heretics,” doubling its role as a receptacle for the excluded.

Curiously, before being a forced sanatorium, there was a hermitage on the island, a small beacon of faith mentioned as early as 1362. A place of prayer transformed by necessity into a space of isolation. This is our first plot twist: the island was not born for sadness; it was condemned to it. The stones of that hermitage, later erased by wars and the construction of the modern lighthouse, hold the echo of these two worlds: the sacred and the proscribed.

The Enigma of the Lighthouse: Debunking the Legend of Fatal Love

The initial note in our case told us of “Manolo Ordoiz,” a lighthouse keeper who committed suicide for love in 1930. A “romantic tragedy.” It is a powerful story, the kind that gets seared into the popular imagination. But a thorough investigation reveals that the truth, as is often the case, is more complex and less novelistic.

There was no Manolo Ordoiz in 1930. The protagonist of our tragedy is another, and his story is even more desolate. His name was José Manuel Andoin, and it was not romantic love that broke him, but the loss of his entire universe. Andoin arrived on the island as a lighthouse keeper in 1944, accompanied by his anchor, his refuge, his everything: his mother, María Torralva. For twenty years, mother and son lived in the shared solitude of Santa Clara, an existence marked by dependence on the weather for provisions and the struggle against the elements.

José Manuel was no ordinary man. He was an elite athlete, an Olympic shooter who competed in four Games, from London 1948 to Mexico 1968. Imagine him: training in the stillness of the island, with the city as a backdrop, preparing for the world’s elite.

The key year is 1968. Technology, that often heartless engine of progress, automated the lighthouse. A human presence was no longer necessary. José Manuel and his mother had to leave their home, their world of 400 meters in diameter. They moved to Igeldo. Uprooting was the first blow. The second, and final, one came in 1974 with the death of his mother. Six months later, unable to bear a world without his home and without his mother, José Manuel Andoin took his own life.

The tragedy was not romantic; it was existential. The story of a man who was stripped of his purpose and his fundamental pillar. A deep human drama that surpasses the legend of heartbreak and turns the lighthouse not into a witness of a lost love, but into the symbol of a dedicated life and an unbearable loneliness.

Mute Witnesses: The Living Clues and Forgotten Legends

Every crime scene has silent witnesses. On Santa Clara, the witnesses are the rock itself and its oldest inhabitants. Geologically, the island is a piece broken off from the continent, a survivor of the same erosion that formed the bay. But the most fascinating witness is a living being: the San Sebastián wall lizard (Podarcis hispanicus sebastiani).

This subspecies is endemic to the island and Mount Urgull. Its isolation for millennia has made it different, a living proof of how separation forges unique identities. It is a biological reflection of the human stories of isolation that the island has sheltered. A small dragon that has seen plagues, lighthouse keepers, and tourists pass by, guarding the memory of solitude in its DNA.

And of course, there is no mystery without its secondary characters, its legends. Before Andoin, the island had another unique inhabitant: José Vicente Arruabarrena, “the Robinson Crusoe of San Sebastián.” A free spirit who, after fighting in the First Carlist War, chose solitude. He lived on the island for two years as the guardian of a failed rabbit farm. His story, less tragic than the lighthouse keeper’s, adds a layer of romanticism to the islet’s biography, the idea of chosen solitude versus imposed solitude.

Resolution of the Case: Santa Clara, Reborn Through Art

Our investigation has taken us through passages of disease, loneliness, and tragedy. But the story of Santa Clara does not end in darkness. As in any good narrative, there is a final act of redemption. In 2021, the lighthouse, that building laden with history, came back to life. Not with a keeper, but with a work of art.

The internationally renowned sculptor, Cristina Iglesias, created “Hondalea” (abyss in the sea) in the bowels of the building. The work is a bronze casting that recreates the seabed, through which water flows and retreats to the rhythm of the tides, creating a hypnotic spectacle that connects the interior of the lighthouse with the force of the ocean that surrounds it.

“Hondalea” has redefined the space. It has transformed a place of isolation and tragedy into a first-rate cultural destination. It is the final chapter of our mystery, where the shadows of the past are not erased, but integrated into a new narrative of beauty and reflection.

Detective’s Guide: How to Interrogate the Island in Person

Now that you know its secrets, the island awaits. You will not see it with the same eyes.

Santa Clara Island has been a lazaretto, a lighthouse, a home, and a tomb. It has witnessed human despair and the tenacity of nature. Today, it is a place of encounter, art, and leisure. The mystery has been solved, not to close the case, but to open it to all who wish to read its multiple layers of history. The next time you look at that silhouette in the bay, you will know that you are not seeing a simple island, but the secret-filled heart of San Sebastián.

Author: Descubre Donostia