In 1462, the city suffered a partial fire, and another general fire occurred in 1498, leaving only nine houses untouched in the latter. The damage endured during the sieges was also considerable. All of this, along with its location off the main road, contributed to diminishing its former prominence, reducing it almost to a village of sailors and fishermen.
Sieges of 1476 and 1477
These events must be understood in the context of the struggle for the throne of Navarre France and Castile during the reign of Eleanor I. In 1476, Alain of Albret "the Great" entered Guipúzcoa with 40,000 men, while Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon were engaged in trying to wrest the throne from the heiress, Joanna, who was supported by Portugal allied with France.
All the knights of Biscay, Álava, and Guipúzcoa participated in the events, with Juan de Gamboa appointed governor of the besieged town. Alain of Albret had to retreat, although he tried again the following year with the same result. At that time, the town was nearly impregnable.
According to Garibay:
"The town stands on a height and is surrounded by high walls. The river waters surround it for the most part and rise at high tide to halfway up those walls. On the landward side, it is heavily towered. It is a rough place where horses can scarcely move."
Violet-le-Duc also describes it in more detail, and it appears in the Crónica de Hernando del Pulgar (Part 2, chap. XXXVII), which reports that during the 1476 siege, the townspeople:
"decided to defend themselves from the base of the town, from the bastions and ditches they had built; for this purpose, they demolished the tops of the towers and battlements so that if the French artillery struck the wall and brought it down, the falling stones would not injure or hinder those below defending the town from outside."
According to an inventory dated May 15, 1508, the weapons and war materials stored in the castle were:
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27 heavy artillery pieces
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pass-volante and lombard pieces with two servants each
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3 pieces called lombardettes
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14 lisardettes
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6 crossbows
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28 ribaduquins
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5 arquebuses
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3 barrels of iron balls
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56 barrels of gunpowder
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2 sacks of saltpeter
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1 barrel of sulfur
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133 crossbows
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46 iron pulleys
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19 storage chests
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375 bundles
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50 pairs of breastplates
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102 helmets with gorgets
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34 bundles of used spears and 77 thick spears