The North Coast of Spain, and the birthplace of Ignatius Loyola

Getaria is a beach town between San Sebastian on the east and Bilbao on the west.

Hondarribia, with the river Bidasoa and France in the background.

Zoom in on the map to see more detail about these places.

Last week we made a couple of trips to the North Coast of Spain on the Bay of Biscay. At the bottom right on the map is Pamplona, and on the upper right is Hondarribia, a Basque town separated from France by the Bidasoa River.

Hondarribia had a strategic location, so over the centuries, the occupants fortified it with high walls all around. They built and rebuilt it many times since the Middle Ages. Cindy loves castles and walled cities. This wall is one of the best preserved. Normally in June the town would be overrun with tourists, many from France.

But the border had been closed because of the coronavirus. We visited on June 22, the first day we could travel outside of Navarra (Hondarribia is located in the neighboring Basque province of Guipuzcua). It was also the first day the border was open with France.

The University of Navarra, No. 1 with employers

The University of Navarra, where I work these days, has the best reputation among employers of all Spanish universities. This according to QS World University Ranking 2021.

In the category of "employability", Navarra, a private Catholic university, also ranks 71 among all universities around the world among employers. The ranking is based on a survey of 50,000 employers. Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, where I worked for two years, ranks 6th in this global ranking. (MIT was first.)

Both UNAV and Tsinghua rank among the top 100 (51-100) in media and communications programs, where I teach. In Spain, UNAV ranks second, behind the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

QS has been doing these rankings since 2004. This year the rankings include 1,200 universites from 80 countries. The rankings are based on academic ranking, reputation among employers, number of students per professor, percentage of foreign professors, and percentage of international students. Seventy percent of the information for the ratings comes from research by QS or third parties and 30 percent from the universities themselves.

Having worked at UNAV for five years now, I can say that the administrators and professors all take seriously the notion that we are trying to "formar buena gente", which roughly means to develop our students into good citizens (literally translated, it means "to shape good people"). They live it and breathe it. QS doesn't actually measure that in the rankings, but the result shows up there.