The mists of legend. In the Poema de Fernán González, attributed to a monk of the Monastery of Arlanza and written around 1260, Hondarribia is mentioned as the setting for an action by Charlemagne, either before or simultaneous with the Battle of Roncesvalles:
132 Sopo Bernald del Carpyo que françeses passavan, que a Fuente Rrabya todos y arrybauan, por conqueryr Espanna segunt que ellos cuydavan, que ge la conquerryan mas non lo byen asmavan.
133 Ovo grandes poderes Bernaldo dayuntar, e dessi enbyo los al puerte de la mar; ovol'todas sus gentes el rrey casto a dar, non dexo a ese puerto el rrey Carlos ribar.
134 Mato y de frranceses rreyes e potestades, com diz la escrrytura syete fueron, sepades, muchos morieron y, esto byen lo creades, que nunca más tornaron a las sus vecindades.
This Roncesvalles–Fuenterrabia parallel is also observable in Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667):
585 Or whom from Biserta sent from Afric shore
586 when Charlemain with all his peerage fell
587 by Fontarabia.
A legend tells of the kings of Navarre hunting on Mount Jaizkibel. According to it, King Sancho II “Abarca” (970–994) encountered a young woman whose beauty he praised, calling her guztiz ederra, and she became the mother of one of his sons. Captain Martín de Juztiz secured in 1613 that a king of arms issued a certificate of royal descent for the members of the Juztiz lineage, based on the supposed equivalence juztiz = guztiz. The document was granted by Philip III. The tradition also attributes to this monarch the construction of the castle preceding the walls, although one of the bastions of the later wall was called, until the 18th century, de Wamba.