Port des Pecheurs

Welcome to the last un-gentrifiable corner of Biarritz. See those little white cabins with red shutters tucked into the harbour wall? Those are called crampottes. Traditional Basque fishing huts. There are exactly fifty-nine of them for ninety-four boat anchorages, and here's the thing that makes them special. The Coastal Law prohibits building any new ones. Ever. This is it. Fifty-nine, frozen in time.

You can't buy one either. They're all owned by the city. The only way to get a crampotte is to rent one from the municipality, and you have to be a Biarrot, a local, who actually owns a boat moored in this harbour. No boat, no cabin. No local address, no cabin. In a town where a studio apartment costs a fortune, these little fishing huts are the one thing money can't touch.

The port itself was inaugurated in eighteen sixty-five after decades of failed attempts. Building breakwaters strong enough to resist the full force of the Atlantic proved extraordinarily difficult. The ocean kept destroying everything they built. When they finally got it right, the port became the centre of what was left of Biarritz's fishing community.

And that community goes way back. The earliest written evidence of fishing here dates to the twelfth century, when Biarritz was a serious whaling centre. Basque whalers would launch from this coast, harpoon whales in the Bay of Biscay, and drag them back to shore for processing. The whale was on the town's coat of arms.

Today you'll find a handful of small restaurants serving fresh seafood down here. It's a completely different atmosphere from the grand hotels above. This is working Biarritz, and it has been for over eight hundred years.