THE SQUARE

The first square in Gerediaga was designed by Martín López de Traña in 1621. It is a slightly elliptical structure of which 16 radii measuring 7.95 metres each remain, radiating from a small central circle. Today, only half can be seen, the rest having fallen in during the successive collapses caused by a landslide on the Durango-Eibar road (1789).

The Assemblies would meet in this square (and probably inside the hermitage in bad weather), with the stones that served as seats for the representatives arranged around its perimeter, with their backs to the hermitage. Five of these original stones still stand on the site, on the perimeter of the second square, while the rest are modern stones placed forming a circle in 1961, at a time when the square had been completely covered by a layer of soil. During the last restoration undertaken, archeologists rearranged them in their original pattern, with the handicap that half the square was missing.