Pamplona

People lived in the Pamplona basin from the late Bronze Age, but the city's traditional birth is the winter of 75–74 BC, when the Roman general Pompey camped here during the war against Sertorius and gave the place his name, Pompaelo. The local Vascones called it Iruña, "the city". In the centuries after Rome it passed between self-rule, the Visigoths and the Franks, was held for a time by a Muslim garrison, and in 778 had its walls torn down by Charlemagne on his way back from Zaragoza, shortly before his rearguard was destroyed at Roncevaux. The town became the seat of the kingdom of Pamplona, later Navarre.

From the late 11th century the pilgrim traffic on the Way of St James brought trade and settlers from beyond the Pyrenees. Occitan merchants and craftsmen founded two new boroughs, San Cernin and San Nicolás, beside the old Navarrese core of the Navarrería, and the three fought bitterly: San Nicolás was burned in 1258, and the Navarrería was destroyed and its people massacred in 1276. King Charles III finally united them into one city in 1423.

After Castile conquered Navarre in 1512, Pamplona became a frontier fortress. The pentagonal citadel was built and the walls were rebuilt from the 16th century; building outside them was banned, so the city could only grow denser. In 1915 the army allowed the southern walls to be pulled down, and the Second Ensanche spread south. Immigration from rural Navarre and other parts of Spain in the 1960s and 1970s, drawn by new industry, turned the old fortress town into a modern city.

San Fermín defines Pamplona to the outside world. From the chupinazo at noon on 6 July to the singing of Pobre de mí at midnight on 14 July, the city dresses in white and red and celebrates Saint Fermin, co-patron of Navarre, with religious ceremonies, music, dances and fireworks. Each morning from 7 July at 8 am six bulls are run through the old-town streets to the bullring, with runners in front of them. Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises, published in 1926, brought the festival literary renown, and its fame and its many foreign visitors owe much to the book.

The rest of the year belongs to the city. Pamplona-Iruña is bilingual in name, and Basque identity is part of public life, though Spanish is the everyday language of most residents. The University of Navarra, founded in 1952 as a corporate work of Opus Dei, and the Public University of Navarre, founded in 1987, are both based in the city. Football means CA Osasuna, which plays at El Sadar, and cycling has a special place: the five-time Tour de France winner Miguel Indurain was born in an outlying area of Pamplona and still lives in the city.

Social life revolves around the old town's bars and squares, the evening round of drinks and pintxos, and walks in the parks along the walls, the citadel and the Arga.

About 208,000 people lived in Pamplona in 2024, and around 21.6 per cent of them were born abroad. The city grew fastest in the 1960s and 1970s, when people came from the Navarrese countryside and from Castile and León and Andalusia; districts such as San Juan, Iturrama and San Jorge date from that time, and Azpilagaña, Mendebaldea and Mendillorri followed in the 1980s and 1990s.

Car-making is a major industry. The city's car plant, bought by SEAT in 1975 and part of the Volkswagen Group since 1994, built more than eight million Polos between 1984 and 2024 and now makes the T-Cross and Taigo, supported by many supplier firms around the city. Pamplona is also the main commercial and services centre of Navarre, and the University of Navarra and its teaching hospital serve students and patients from across Spain.

Daily rhythms follow the Spanish pattern of late lunches and later dinners. The old town fills in the evenings and at weekends, while most families live in the flats of the Ensanches and the newer districts and use the parks — the citadel, Taconera, Yamaguchi and the river banks — for walks and children's play.

Navarre is famous for its vegetables, and Pamplona's restaurants show them off: asparagus from the Navarrese plots, artichokes, piquillo peppers from the south-west of the region around Lodosa, and the vegetable menestra shared with neighbouring La Rioja and Aragon. Lamb is the classic meat — Navarre's lamb has a protected geographical indication — cooked as cochifrito or in a chilindrón sauce.

From the rivers comes trucha a la navarra, trout stuffed with ham, and from the sea bacalao al ajoarriero, salt cod cooked with garlic. Pork goes into the city's own chorizo de Pamplona and into chistorra, a thin fast-cured sausage with garlic and paprika that is fried and served in bars and at fairs. Roncal, a sheep's cheese from the Pyrenean valley of the same name, and Idiazabal are the cheeses to look for.

The pintxo bars of Calle San Nicolás, Calle Estafeta and Calle Jarauta serve small, often elaborate dishes rather than free snacks with a drink. Meals end with patxaran, a sloe-flavoured liqueur that began as a home-made drink of rural Navarre and became popular well beyond it after it was commercialised in the 1950s.