Short answers, pulled from the story.
Vitoria-Gasteiz carries both its Spanish name, Vitoria, and its Basque name, Gasteiz, as a compound official name. Residents use whichever form matches the language they are speaking, and Basque speakers may also use the Basque form Vitorixe.
The Battle of Vitoria took place on the 21st of June 1813, when a British, Portuguese, and Spanish army under the Marquess of Wellington defeated French forces under Joseph Bonaparte and Marshal Jean-Baptiste Jourdan along the river Zadorra. When news reached Vienna in late July 1813, the instrument-maker Johann Nepomuk Mälzel commissioned Beethoven to commemorate the victory, resulting in Opus 91, known as Wellington's Victory or the Battle of Vitoria.
Vitoria-Gasteiz won the European Green Capital title in 2012, becoming the first Spanish municipality to receive the designation. The city was recognized for its high proportion of green public areas, its biodiversity, and its green policies, including ensuring every resident lives within 300 metres of an open green space. The UN Global Green City Award followed in 2019.
On the 3rd of March 1976, police acting under the orders of Interior Minister Manuel Fraga fired tear gas into the church during a peaceful labor assembly attended by around 5,000 people, then fired on demonstrators as they fled the building. Five people were killed and more than one hundred were wounded by gunshot.
In 1492, the same year Jews were expelled from Spain, the Vitoria town council agreed to maintain the Jewish cemetery, which came to be known as Judizmendi, meaning mountain of the Jews in Basque. The city honored that agreement until 1952, when conversion to a public garden was proposed. The Jewish community in Bayonne intervened, and in 2004 Israeli artist Yaël Artsi created the monument Coexistence at the site.
Sancho the Wise, King of Navarre, founded the town of Nova Victoria in 1181 on a hilltop already settled by Vasconic people. In 1199, Alfonso VIII of Castile captured the town after a nine-month siege and annexed it to the Kingdom of Castile. It received its formal city charter in 1431 from King Juan II of Castile.