MY PARENTS


My father, Serafin Baroja y Zornoza, was a mining engineer, who wrote
books both in Castilian and Basque, and he, too, came from San
Sebastian. My mother's name is Carmen Nessi y Goni. She was born in
Madrid.

I should be a very good man. My father was a good man, although he was
capricious and arbitrary, and my mother is a good woman, firmer and more
positive in her manifestations of virtue. Yet, I am not without
reputation for ferocity, which, perhaps, is deserved.

I do not know why I believed for a long while that I had been born in
the Calle del Puyuelo in San Sebastian, where we once lived. The street
is well within the old town, and truly ugly and forlorn. The mere idea
of it was and is distasteful to me.

When I complained to my mother about my birthplace and its want of
attractiveness, she replied that I was born in a beautiful house near
the esplanade of La Zurriola, fronting on the Calle de Oquendo, which
belonged to my grandmother and looked out upon the sea, although the
house does so no longer, as a theatre has been erected directly in
front. I am glad that I was born near the sea, because it suggests
freedom and change.