the town only joined Gipuzkoa in 1459 after the war came to an end. Up to the 16th century, Donostia remained mostly out of wars, but by the beginning of the 15th century, a line of walls of simple construction is attested encircling the town. The last chapter of the town in the Middle Ages was brought about by a fire that devastated Donostia in 1489. After burning to the ground, the town began a new renaissance by building up mainly on stone instead of bare timber.
Modern Age
The advent of the Modern Age brought a period of instability and war for the city. After the fall of Navarre, new state boundaries started to be drawn that left Donostia at the forefront of the Spanish border with France. New chunky and more sophisticated walls were erected and the town got involved in the wars engaged between Spain and France on the aftermath of the disappearance of the independent Kingdom of Navarre in 1521. Actually, the town provided critical naval help to the Spanish king on the frontier disputes that took place in Hondarribia, which earned the town the titles "Muy Noble y Muy Leal", recorded on its coat of arms. Moreover, the town took sides with the new emperor Charles V by sending a party to the Battle of Noain and providing help to the emperor against the Revolt of the Comuneros.
After the conquest of the Iberian Navarre and the attachment of Donostia to Gipuzkoa, Gascons, who had played a leading role in the political and economic life of the town since its foundation, began to be excluded from influential public positions by means of a string of regional sentences upheld by royal decision (regional diets of Zestoa 1527, Hondarribia 1557, Bergara 1558, Tolosa 1604 and Deba1662). Meanwhile, the climate of war and disease left the town in a poor condition that drove many fishermen and traders to take to the sea as corsairs as a way of getting a living, most of the times under the auspices of the king Philip
