What's on in San Sebastián

The city's patron-saint day, kept as twenty-four hours of drumming. The flag goes up in the Plaza de la Constitución at midnight and companies of adults and children — dressed as cooks or as Napoleonic soldiers, beating drums and wooden barrels — march the neighbourhoods until midnight the next day.

Planning: Nothing else in the city happens that day, and it is loud everywhere, all night. Book a room well ahead and pick one you can sleep in, or accept that you will not.

The Big Week: an international fireworks competition fired over the bay late each night, plus concerts, Basque rural sports and street events.

Planning: The fireworks draw the whole city onto the Concha promenade and Monte Urgull. Get a spot early or watch from the Zurriola side, and expect the seafront to be impassable afterwards.

The trainera regatta — crews of thirteen rowing fixed-seat Basque boats around buoys in the bay, in front of a crowd on the beach and the promenade.

Planning: Two heats a week apart, and the aggregate decides it. Free to watch from the sand; the promenade rail is taken hours before the start.

One of Europe's major competitive film festivals, centred on the Kursaal, with public screenings across the city's cinemas.

Planning: Public tickets go on sale ahead of the festival and the popular sessions clear fast. Hotel prices are at their annual peak that week.

Nightly processions of hooded brotherhoods carrying immense floats, through the small hours. In Andalucía it is the defining week of the year rather than a church event people attend.

The night children get their presents, marked by a cavalcade throwing sweets to the crowd. Bigger than Christmas Day in most of Spain.

A religious procession through streets strewn with rosemary and decorated with awnings and altars.