Alkiza
Alkiza is a rural municipality in the centre of Gipuzkoa, northwest of the Tolosaldea County, in the Basque Country. It is 27 kilometres south of San Sebastian. In 2019 it had 373 inhabitants, of which 88.8% were Basque speakers. Alkiza is an independent municipality since 1731; previously it depended on Tolosa and San Sebastian.
Alkiza is connected with Anoeta and Asteasu through the GI-3630 road. The Asteasu branch was inaugurated in 1952 and the Anoeta branch in 1957. Until then, farm roads and paths linked Alkiza with the nearby villages.
The village is 340 meters above sea level and there are the school, the town hall, the pelota-court and the parish church. The municipality has more than 40 scattered farms and houses.
Its inhabitants are nicknamed in Basque oiloak.
The village's main festival is on September 8.
Geography
Alkiza is located in the east of Hernio-Gazume massif. The municipal area is mostly steep, with the flattest area in Arana neighborhood.The local climate is typically Oceanic.
As Hernio is a limestone formation, there are in Alkiza numerous karst structures such as caves, chasms and sinkholes. The Leize Haundia 2 / Sabe-saia complex is the most important karst structure in Alkiza. The two caves form a system 340 m deep, 2 km of galleries and a stream inside.
The most outstanding summits in the municipality are Herniozabal, Herniotxiki, Enaizpuru, Alluts and Beleburu to the west and Mendiola to the east.
A quarter of the surface of Hernio-Gazume Special Conservation Zone is located in the municipality of Alkiza.
Hydrology
As mentioned above, Alkiza is a karst area, so the rain and thaw waters go underground to a large extent. For this reason, some streams and creeks only carry water in the event of intense precipitation and, in others, there are surface waters only in some sections of the course.There are two main streams in Alkiza:
- Mandabe stream runs through Arana neighborhood and discharges its waters in Anoeta to Oria river. It is born in the source called Bidania erreka, where the waters of the Leize / Haundia 2 / Sabe-saia complex emerge. Among the inhabitants of Alkiza it was thought that the waters of this source came from the other side of Hernio, specifically from the village of Bidania, and hence its name.
- Aranguren stream is born next to the farmhouse of the same name and runs through Aldapa neighborhood. It pours its waters into Asteasu stream, a tributary of Oria river. This stream is called Arraiaga downstream of the Egurrola bridge.
Adjacent municipalities
History
The first human footprints in Alkiza date back to the Bronze Age. Ceramic pieces in the Olatzazpi cave and the burial mound of the place called Itzuregi are an example of this.The first written references to Alkiza are from 1348. In fact, by order of the King of Castile Alfonso XI, the list of noblemen of Tolosa was drawn up. In this list there are several Alkiza households. Alkiza is mentioned administratively associated to Tolosa. In 1396 Tolosa recognized Alkiza the right to choose its judges. Because of taxes Alkiza and other villages of Tolosaldea had disputes with Tolosa since 1435. Within this process, in 1450, Alkiza decided to join San Sebastián, but this did not materialize legally until in 1479.
Between the 15th and 18th centuries, Alkiza self-governed as an open council, although judges and aldermen were also appointed for everyday decisions.
At the end of the first third of the 18th century, the most important moment in the history of Alkiza arrived: it became a municipality. On January 21, 1731, Alkiza was declared a villa by King Philip V and separated from San Sebastián. The distance to San Sebastián was the most important reason to carry out this secession. Miguel Irazusta was the first mayor. That same year, the limits of Alqiiza with the villages in the area were officially defined and each of the cairns was signalled. The Asteasu boundary, for example, was delimited by the cairns of Olatza, Arizmendi, Zalminaga and Arraiaga. 54 houses constituted the new municipality.
By becoming an independent municipality, Alkiza acquired the right to participate in the General Assembly of Gipuzkoa. This had an economic cost and Alkiza proposed Anoeta to join and to share expenses. In 1742 the two villages founded the Ainssu union for their representation in the General Assembly. In 1815 Hernialde joined Ainssu and the enlarged union was called Ainssuberreluz.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the communal land was privatized in Alkiza. The first movement occurred because of the debts derived from the War of the Convention, and so in 1797 the local assembly authorized the City Council to sell communal land. The first auction of communal land was held in 1799 and the City Council sold 53 lots. From that date until 1814 the City Council held six auctions for the alienation of communal land. In 1810, other goods were auctioned, such as the Olaa and Goiko Errota mills in Aldapa neighborhood and Igaran in Arana neighborhood. At the end of the 18th century, half of the municipality's land was public and between 1799 and 1845 the City Council auctioned 682 communal plots, 5.3 km2. The communal land was reduced to an area of 0.4 km2.
This privatization seriously affected the economy of the city council. In fact, the council obtained great economic resources by selling firewood, charcoal, chestnuts and others. This caused, for example, in 1801 the loss of the resident notaries that Alkiza had since 1749. The forest guards responsible for the municipal forests and nurseries also disappeared.
The two Carlist wars of the 19th century had little effect on Alkiza. Although, in the Third Carlist War, the so-called Alkiza encounter happened in 1873. The Carlist guerrilla leader Santa Cruz priest was suspected to be somewhere in Hernio area and the miqueletes and the liberal troops went looking for him. They found no one and decided to descend from Zelatun pass to Alkiza. Upon entering the village they were greeted with shots, but the liberals expelled the Carlists carrying a charge in bayonet. On the other hand, it was frequent that Santa Cruz took shelter in the priest's house of Alkiza, whose parish priest was a fervent Carlist.
The mail service started in 1873 with two postmen. One of them made the Azpeitia-Alquiza-Larraul-Asteasu route and the other, Tolosa-Alquiza-Larraul-Asteasu.
In 1885 the city council decided to bring up the telegraph and telephone to the village. These services were based in the municipal tavern. The phone was not extended to all households in the municipality until the beginning of the decade of 1980.
In 1911 four local entrepreneurs built a hydroelectric power station in the course of Mandabe stream. In this way, households of Alkiza were supplied with electric power. This plant was a pioneer of the current Elektralkiza hydroelectric power station. Alkiza was supplied with electrical energy produced by Mandabe stream until 1971 when the Spanish large power company Iberduero installed two transformation centers in the municipality. The first motorcar arrived in Alkiza on November 2, 1930.
Administrative organization
In 1775 the City Council issued a decree that organized the collection of fern, dead leaves, and the like for the livestock beddings from the communal land. In it, the municipality was divided into four neighbourhoods: Azaldegi, Aldapa, Arana Behea and Arana Goikoa.At the time the quotas for the payment of the local doctor were established in 1847, the municipality was divided again into four neighbourhoods: Azaldegi, Aldapa, Arana and Herriburua. In 1884 Aldapa neighbourhood was divided into two: Aldapa and Hernio. Sakamidra neighbourhood was set up in 1940, bringing together several farmhouses from Arana and Azaldegi.
In addition to the urban nucleus, called Plaza by the neighbours, Alkiza is currently officially divided into five neighbourhoods: Aldapa, Arana, Azaldegi, Hernio and Sakamidra.
Demography
At the time the first written documentation about Alkiza appeared, that is to say in the 14th century, it is estimated that it had about 60 inhabitants; at the beginning of the 17th century there were around 230 and when it was established as a municipality, about 270. At the beginning of the 19th century, more than 350 people lived in Alkiza. The first exact data on the number of inhabitants are from the mid-19th century. The following table shows the evolution of the population of Alkiza since 1851.At the beginning of the 21st century, the population of Alquiza was comparable to the one it had when it became a municipality. This has a simple explanation from the point of view of the economic and family structure of the municipality. From the middle of the 20th century, agriculture ceased to be the engine of the local economy. The alkizarras began to go to work in both industry and services located in nearby towns such as Asteasu, Anoeta or Tolosa. At the same time the large families the rural economy needs began to shrink, from six to seven offspring to just two or three.
Economy
Until the middle of the 20th century, agriculture and related activities such as blacksmithing or watermills were Alkiza's main economic activities.Agrarian activity was organized around the farm and it was largely a subsistence economy. They used to live on what the farm produced. Unlike in other Gipuzkoan regions, it doesn't seem that shepherding had a great weight in the economy of the Alkiza farms.
Alkiza has historically three mills: Igaran, in Arana neighbourhood on Mandabe stream, and Olaa and Goiko Errota in Aldapa neighbourhood on Aranguren stream. These last two mills were active until 1953. Corn and wheat were ground.
In the 16th century, the Egurrola forge had increased activity between 1511 and 1615. The forge were destroyed by a large flood.
Charcoal was an important monetary supplement for the farmers of Alkiza, who sold it to the industry and homes in nearby municipalities such as Tolosa. Wood from the forests of Hernio is a very suitable raw material for the manufacture of charcoal. This activity shaped the structure of Alkiza's forests, resulting in many pollarded beech trees. This activity survived until the early 1960s. In the 1950s, a dozen and a half charcoal bunkers could be lit at the same time.
Between 1945 and 1950 a group of entrepreneurs, including the mayor of Alkiza, Mateo Aranburu, built a system of cables, pulleys and posts used to take down beech wood from the forests of Hernio to the Konporta farmhouse in Asteasu. This wood was sold to bakeries and used to cook bread.
In the last decades of the 20th century, Alkiza had a small industrial estate next to the Umanea neighbourhood of Asteasu, which is no longer active. Baldosas Jarri was the main local company.
At present, Alkiza has a very weak economic activity of its own and the locals work mainly outside the municipality, mainly in the industry and services of the region. There is a presence of a significant group of university professors among the residents of Alkiza. In 2020, two farms, the Lete rural hotel, Inazio Urruzola Txakoli winery, the municipal restaurant, Elektralkiza mini hydroelectric plant and a sharpening company make up the productive fabric of Alkiza.