The Gran Kursaal building was opened on 29th July 1922, being one of the big works in the city during the first quarter of the century. The image is configured as one the best pictures of the ludic, cosmopolitan and in some kind arrogant city, representing the San Sebastian of the Belle Époque.Three years later, at midnight 31st October 1924, gambling was banned during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the casino closed the doors.

The Gran Kursaal, once gambling was banned, resigned itself to be the provisional venue for diverse activities until 1972, when the society owning the building agreed to demolish it.

The lot, a matter pending for more than two decades, became a municipal property. That was a unique opportunity to equip the city with an Auditorium and a Congress Centre, by means of public promotion.

In 1989, the Town Council called for Technical Consultation inviting six internationally renowned architects: Mario Botta, Norman Foster, Arata Isozaki, Rafael Moneo, Juan Navarro Baldeweg, and Luis Peña Ganchegui.

Finally, in 1990 and among the six proposals, Rafael Moneo’s proposal was selected “due to the appropriate consideration of the lot K as a geographical feature in the Urumea River mouth, due to the freeing of public spaces as platforms opened to the sea and, specially, due to the rotundity, courage and originality of the proposal”, as the jury’s decision says.The execution project was drawn between 1991 and 1994 and, in 1995, the project was definitely approved and the construction works started on 19th May in that same year.

On 3rd June 1999, the activities began in the Chamber Hall with the first congress, on company creation in the field of new technologies. On 23rd August 1999, the architectural complex was officially inaugurated with different simultaneous concerts. The stage of the new Auditorium was the venue for a concert by the Euskadi Symphony Orchestra and the soprano Ainhoa Arteta.