July is the bottom of the northern Spanish year. The swell window is shut, the famous left has nothing to break on, and the beaches run knee to waist high on whatever wind swell the Bay of Biscay makes for itself.
Said plainly, the surf is not the reason to be here in July. What is: San Sebastián twenty minutes east of Zarautz, one of the densest eating towns in Europe, where the bars put their food on the counter and you move between them rather than sitting down. The coast road west runs through fishing villages an hour apart, and the whole thing is walkable, cheap and open until two in the morning.
For a surfer who needs waves in July, Spain's other coast is the answer rather than this one: the Atlantic side of Andalusia is windier, further south and set up for exactly the season this one is not.
