The Basque town of Segura is known for the importance of its medieval historic center, and most of its 1,500 residents still live within the walls that protected this strategic town. Outside the walled enclosure, the pace of life of its inhabitants is similar to that of any other Gipuzkoan and, in fact, the majority work outside the municipality, in the plants of the powerful industry of the Goierri region. Within the walls, however, life happens at a different pace. The town is basically pedestrian, in the square and the fronton there is a climate of particular calm and the bells of the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption continue to set some guidelines and are even responsible for giving the news, through a characteristic ringing. , in case a neighbor has died.
The bells of this church, which maintain certain peculiarities, are part of the atmosphere of this municipality, renovated in recent years thanks to the arrival of young families from other towns in Gipuzkoa. Some neighbors even highlight a “very strong emotional link” with the traditions around these bells, which have been ringing for 300 years. They ring at dawn in the morning, the Angelus at noon, they sound in a special way at some festivals and when someone dies, they ring differently depending on whether it is a man or a woman.
The nightly ringing of these bells, however, had become a nightmare for some residents, who have managed to get the municipality's City Council to modify a tradition of three centuries and interrupt the ringing of the bells during the night, between 11:01 p.m. 6.59 hours.
The first complaints about the nighttime chimes reached the City Council in 2021, according to Mayor Izarra Urdalleta. “Some neighbors sent us their complaint and we responded positively, with the idea of stopping the bells at night. We get to communicate the decision. However, other neighbors complained about this decision and, finally, the first ones who had complained about the sound of the bells withdrew their initial request, after speaking with the City Council.”
A year later, complaints about the ringing of the bells again reached the Town Hall from another group of neighbors. On this occasion, they also knocked on the door of Ararteko, the ombudsman in Euskadi. “On this occasion we responded to the neighbors who questioned us that we would analyze the situation. The Ararteko asked us if the municipal ordinance regarding noise was complied with and what we have done is analyze that, through a legal report and a technical analysis, with measurements,” says the mayor.
These measurements, carried out by a specialized company, showed that the nighttime ringing of the bells exceeded the decibels that the municipal ordinance allows at night, so that the regulations were not complied with. And that is where the City Council has had to make a final decision. “At night, the bells ring for the last time at 11:00 p.m. and, in the morning, they ring for the first time at 7:00 a.m. That is, there is a period of eight hours in which they do not ring, taking into account that what the neighbors asked was to be able to guarantee sleep and not so much that they did not ring throughout the night,” says Urdalleta.
Among the neighbors there is a division of opinion regarding the decision, which logically has pleased those who brought the complaint to Ararteko.
On the opposite side, Laureano Telleria, who for 42 years was in charge of winding the clock that regulates the ringing of the bells, is critical of this decision. "I am very sorry. For 42 years I climbed the stairs of the Church about 5,000 times to reset the clock and, logically, it makes me terribly sad. I understand the people who may have complained: they have the right and Ararteko agrees with them, to a certain extent. However, I have spoken to many people about it and I would say that more than 90% of the town is in favor of the bells ringing at night as well. Even at the residence, talking to the elderly, they told me that it was not a bother to them,” he says.
In his opinion, this controversy should have been resolved through a consultation in the municipality that would decide the future of this 300-year-old tradition. Before the end of the year, however, Segura's nighttime chimes went down in history.
