Moilaberri: Your First Stop to Discover Zumaia

It started out as a railway station and later became a health center. Today it houses Zumaia's tourism office and also serves the same function for the Geopark, bringing the building's past and present together. It reopened on June 15, 2026, to give visitors to Zumaia everything they need to get to know the town, along with ideas and inspiration for exploring the surrounding area.

The tourism office provides information to help visitors plan their stays and discover everything Zumaia, Deba, and Mutriku have to offer within the Basque Coast Geopark. It is also a gateway to the Kosta Berdea and Urola Behea touristic areas, whose towns, natural areas, heritage, culture, and food are all within easy reach of one another. Besides information on the flysch and the karst, routes, guided tours, and natural areas, the office can help visitors put together experiences tailored to their interests and the time they have available.

The building also offers a deeper look at Zumaia's history. On the first floor one finds Zumaia Through History, a permanent exhibition tracing the town's development and shedding light on its past, and, with it, its present-day identity.

Zumaia's maritime and industrial heritage also has its place at Moilaberri, as the ZIIZ Association helps showcase the legacy that shipbuilding, industry, and working life have left on the town.

To understand Moilaberri's history, it helps to know that it was never a station designed for passengers, but rather for freight. Its very name hints at its origins: Moilaberri means "new dock" in Basque. To serve the ships bringing goods to this area, a new dock was built and the railway line was extended to it to facilitate loading and unloading. Thus, it became an important piece of infrastructure, both for the shipping of products made by companies in the Urola Valley and for the distribution of goods arriving from elsewhere. Like the Urola River, the railway played a key role in the industrial development of Zumaia and its environs.

Although Zumaia's maritime history is usually associated with fishing, its port has also been especially important for trade, with shipbuilding, the transport of goods, and industry having left deep marks on the town's development. Moilaberri offers a closer look at that legacy, thanks in part to the Beduola Association's contribution to the creation of this exhibition.

Past and Present at the Same Station

What makes Moilaberri special is that it hasn't abandoned its past with each change in the building's use. It started out as a freight railway station, then became a health center serving local residents, and today it welcomes visitors to Zumaia, introducing them to everything the town and its vicinity have to offer.

Zumaia has also historically been a railway hub. One sign of this, is the panel —still visible today at the entrance— bearing the name "Zumaia empalme" ("Zumaia Junction"), used for the passenger station, where trains from the Urola line met those of the Ferrocarriles Vascongados, the forerunner of today's Euskotren line between Donostia/San Sebastián and Bilbao. That rail connection still makes sense today from a tourism standpoint, as it helps explain Zumaia's role as a link between the Geopark, Kosta Berdea, and Urola Behea.

The building's new use, then, rather than turning its back on the past, brings its heritage to the fore. Moilaberri still preserves the town's memory, but it now serves another purpose as well: helping visitors to Zumaia gain a better understanding of the town itself and the area around it, as history, tourism, and heritage go hand in hand under one roof.

If you're visiting Zumaia for the first time, Moilaberri is well worth a stop. There, you can pick up information and get to know the town better before strolling its streets, heading out to the cliffs, walking along the Urola River, or exploring other corners of Geoparkea and the districts Zumaia belongs to.

Moilaberri won't map out a route you have to stick to. Instead, it will help you get your own journey underway. After all, like any station, this is where journeys begin. This time, though, what moves you won't be a train, but your eagerness to discover Zumaia and everything around it.