May turns the country around. The swell that made the winter is gone, and what is left is a two-and-a-half kilometre beach at Zarautz doing the job it does for most of the Basque Country, which is teaching it to surf.
The switch is worth understanding rather than regretting. A north-facing coast in May gets small, tidy waves out of what is left of the North Atlantic, and small tidy waves on sand with a town behind them is the best thing that can happen to somebody in their first week. The famous left forty minutes west has nothing to offer until September.
The water reaches 16°C, the schools are running, and the beach is not yet the beach it becomes in August.
