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We are sitting on the terrace of a bar in the suburbs of Pamplona, in the Basque region of Spain.
The city is famous for its bull runs, and it’s also a place that gave inspiration for Hemingway to write his first novel.
Let’s follow his steps to find out why this city is so intriguing.
It’s Monday evening at the end of September 2018.
Tanja is feverishly looking for a place to stay for us on Booking.com.
A smiling man in his forties approaches our table, but after reaching the table he starts to back away.
– Sorry, I thought you were Basques too. Didn’t mean to disturb you.
If you prefer to read this article in Finnish, continue here:
Hemingwayn Pamplona on pintxoja ja pikadoreja
We hastily say that by no means he’s bothering us.
– Just sit down with us. We need to book accommodation here for the next night, but it won’t take long. Tanja only needs to press the book button.
– Do you need accommodation? You can move into my apartment in the old town, it’s empty on weekdays, says the stranger.
Pamplona – the city of the Basques and Navarreses
We have arrived in Pamplona (Iruña) from San Sebastian (Donostia).
We are not in the Basque Country only to eat pintxos. We are writing a magazine article about the Spanish school system and we need to find someone to interview.
Pamplona is the capital of the Basque region and the autonomous region of Navarre.
We planned to visit Pamplona only briefly, but our plans changed, as they often do.
Travel tip
In the Basque region, the destinations at the bus stations are written in their Basque names.
In Donostia, you’ll check the timetables for Iruña.
Pamplona is an old Roman city
Pamplona was founded by the ancient Romans, more precisely by the Roman magnate Pompey during his military campaign around the beginning of the era. Soon it was settled by the Basques, but over the centuries the ruler changed from one to the other. Pamplona, located at the foot of the Pyrenees, has always been a border town between the present-day Spanish and French regions.
On the other hand, the strategic location has also brought it prosperity, and early on it became an important stage town on the pilgrimage route of Saint James to Santiago de Compostela, as it still is today. Pamplona was also the capital of the Kingdom of Navarre in the Middle Ages.
The city’s current walls are from the 16th century. Until the beginning of the last century, the militarily important fortress city could only grow inside the walls, with limited space.
You seek gardens in the old town in vain, because high multi-storey buildings were built in their places already centuries ago.
We pass the walls and continue to our booked accommodation located outside of the old town.
Tip for affordable accommodation
Hence a shoestring budget of ours we had chosen an affordable stay, as usual.
We settle in the comfortable *Pension Maria Asun run by the lady herself.
Affordable here means 45 € per night for a double room (price checked Oct. 2023)
This small privately owned accommodation is located 2 km or a twenty-minute walk away from the center, right next to Yamaguchi Park.
Our room was clean and comfortable, a spotless bathroom was shared with a couple of other rooms.
There were plenty of restaurants nearby, so the first evening we didn’t go to the old town but had dinner in our neighborhood.
We found a small restaurant specializing in Serrano (air-dried) ham and it worked for us more than well.
A glass of quite nice red wine costs 1.60 euros.
We arrived in Pamplona on Saturday, so finding an interviewee couldn’t start before Monday.
We take Sunday off and explore the old town in the late afternoon.
There’s a surprisingly big crowd at the old town gates. The closer we get to the center, the bigger the crowd, and proceeding to the old town turns out to be troublesome.
The situation is not made easier by the fact that the Spanish are not known to be the quietest people in the world, so when there are five of them per square meter the noise is considerable.
We’ve seen some party parades on the way so we figure it’s not the usual weekend crowd. We are right.
The people of Pamplona have a shadow-bullrun of their own
Pamplona is world famous for the fiesta of its patron saint, San Fermin, in July.
San Fermin is said to be the city’s first bishop. The highlight of the fiesta is the bull run where those who want to escape ahead of loose bulls run a certain route through the streets of the city, mostly on the narrow Calle de San Agustin.
The run starts at the town hall and ends at the bullring. There the event culminates in a bullfight, where the bulls that participated in the run meet their bloody end. So it’s not about innocent fun.
However, San Fermin is already so well-known and touristized that the townspeople no longer enjoy themselves there, but instead hold their own fiesta in September. And now is the fiesta weekend.
In the shadow-Fermin, you don’t run a race with real bulls, but men move around the streets pushing buggies, on top of which is a kind of bull’s head made of sheet metal.
The bull’s “horns” throw sparks and the men are chasing children who are screaming with excitement. Showers of sparks also fly on people sitting on street-side terraces on the way, so you should not wear very fire-sensitive clothing. Tanja’s summer dress got holes in it.
San Fermin and the bulls can be seen everywhere in the city, on t-shirts and souvenirs, as well as on the cider bar’s tap, which is shaped like a bull’s head.
We throw ourselves into the party atmosphere as well as we can and manage to find a free table at a pintxo place near the bullring.
Luck kicks in at the time of need
On Monday we try in vain to find a suitable interviewee. We also got bad news, there would be no more room for the next night in our excellent pénsion.
We walk to a nearby restaurant street for dinner and after the meal, we go to the terrace of the adjacent bar to have a few drinks and look online for a new place to stay.
And then an unknown Basque man bangs on our table, offering his own apartment.
We are naturally amazed by the offer and ask for more information, such as how much he wants for rent.
– You don’t have to pay anything. I’m a gym teacher in San Sebastian and I’m there for weekdays, so the apartment is empty anyway.
To top it all, our new friend Alberto offers one more drinks. He mentions that it’s his first time in this bar and in fact the whole district, being the old town habitant.
But this is not our only luck, let’s move on.
Our new quartier on the bull run street
We jump into Alberto’s van, which he drives to the parking garage under the central square, Plaza de Castillo.
The apartment turns out to be only a 1-minute walk from it, right along Calle de San Agustin.
Yes, it is the famous Bull Run Street.
You couldn’t stay in a better location in Pamplona.
Narrow wooden stairs lead up to the top floor of the old house.
Alberto mentions this is his childhood home, which however now has a tenant. Alberto himself lives at the end of even narrower stairs one floor up, in an attic apartment that was built for him as his own home cave when he was a teenager.
Alberto’s small but cozy apartment has a living room, a bathroom, and a bedroom.
When standing on a stool, you can look out over the Pyrenees and Pamplona’s medieval cathedral through the skylight.
While lying in bed, you can gaze at the starry sky from the window.
There’s no proper kitchen, but it doesn’t matter with all the pintxo bars and other restaurants just around.
In the downstairs apartment, there is a large terrace where you can watch the bull run from a bird’s eye view. Or should we nowadays say a drone’s eye view?
Our friend mentions that he himself participated in the run a few times when he was younger.
We get the keys and a ride back to our boarding house. Alberto regrets that he won’t be able to join us the next day as his work in another city calls.
We’re flabbergasted by this stroke of luck, but there’s more to come.
As Alberto introduces the apartment, we also meet the tenant downstairs, a woman who casually mentions that she is a teacher.
So that’s the interviewee we’re looking for!
A Spanish lunch gives us a surprise
The next day we move to our new home.
The only problem is that in the daylight we no longer recognize which of the numerous doors next to each other is ours.
We try all the keys we got. We are almost sure which one is the right door, but any of the keys doesn’t seem to fit in the lock.
We message our host, who says he could come over after work and let us in, no problem.
While waiting, we get to know the neighborhood.
The whole street is full of restaurants, bars, and small shops. On one side street, there is a shop selling Basque books, and on another an old-time tobacco shop.
We decide to have lunch at the restaurant next to the house which we assume is the right one.
A three-course ”menu del dia”, or lunch of the day, costs twelve euros, including wine, sangria or water, and coffee. We chose lunch plates and wine.
We expect to get glasses of wine, but we forget we’re in Spain.
A 75-centiliter decanter is brought to the table… Fortunately, we have plenty of time.
Reunion with Alberto
Our host arrives too and fits the key in exactly the keyhole we thought it belonged.
He just makes it work as well and we get inside to settle down.
Since Alberto has now driven here from Donostia, he wants to hang out on his terrace with us, and of course, we have nothing against that.
He has bought himself a couple of beers and a bottle of red wine for us – so yes, in addition to lending us his apartment, he is giving us free drinks at every turn.
A little regretfully, he adds that since he doesn’t drink wine himself, he’s not sure if we’ll like what he’s bought.
The choice has hit the button, we have watched the same quality in the store ourselves. And we wouldn’t have spit the gift wine out of our mouths anyway.
We also get good information about the city and the Basque culture.
The next day we interview the teacher, at the same hot terrace decorated with Basque flags.
The interviewee turns out to be visionary and sharp, in other words, a perfect match.
So we have done our work and could move towards Bilbao, but we decide to stay. We have permission to accommodate the apartment as long as we want, and we haven’t had time to explore Pamplona properly yet, so why rush?
Three months of continuous traveling is also starting to affect us and we don’t want to change places all the time.
And then pintxos!
The location of our apartment is as central as it can be, so there is no shortage of dinner places. Twenty meters away is Bar Gaucho Tabana, a pintxo bar recommended by our Finnish friend, which will be the base of our short stay.
The bar, which is full from night to night, also has table service, but a large number of customers crowd the counter, choosing their favorite pintxos and shouting their orders over the noise to the waiters.
Cardboard plates and napkins are dropped directly onto the tile floor, where they are swept away at the end of the evening. The traditional way may sound messy, but it’s actually much more convenient than emptying the potentially overflowing trash every once in a while.
On one evening we manage to get the bar stools under us right next to the pintxo selection, so it is easy for us to show what we want.
We are very impressed when one of the options is a pintxo with sea urchin roe.
We’ve been hunting for this delicacy since our stay in Rome two months ago and finally, we got it.
The head waiter of the place has time to chat with us and when we mention his exceptionally good, downright native-level English, he laughs and tells us that he is from Melbourne.
Well, of course. A familiar place to us too.
The guy has already spent twenty years in Spain. A traditional love story, you know.
Bar Gaucho is located right on the corner of Plaza de Castillo, but we also visited to eat and drink on the outskirts of the square itself.
Hemingway’s Pamplona
In the 1920s, Ernest Hemingway arrived in Pamplona from Paris with his friends to party and watch bullfights. He fell in love with the city and based on the trip he wrote his first novel, The Sun Also Rises. It was published in 1926 and made not only Hemingway but also Pamplona world-famous.
Hemingway is naturally well remembered in Pamplona and there is also a monument to him next to the bullring.
For Hemingway, who kept up a macho image, bullfighting was a natural bench sport.
Pamplona was a perfect place to watch it, at least for the circumstances. With more than 19,000 seats the city’s bullfight arena is the third largest in the world after Madrid and Mexico City.
In Hemingway’s time, it was brand-new, rebuilt in 1923.
In Hemingway’s defense, it must be said that at that time there was nothing strange about bullfighting in Spain and it was a part of the Spanish culture. Today the country is divided in its attitude towards bullfighting. The negative attitude is probably winning and bullfighting is completely banned in several regions of Spain.
Hemingway’s Pamplona also has good food and cozy cafes. Papa Ernest however spent most of his time outside the arena.
On the edge of the Plaza de Castillo are two of his favorite spots: Bar Txoko next to Gaucho, and Café Iruña.
We tried Txoko for drinks and Iruña, founded in 1888, for cake and coffee.
The interior and atmosphere of the latter have been well preserved and exude a bygone world. The prices are suitable even for the budget traveler’s wallet.
City of pilgrims
We also go to see Pamplona Cathedral, although only from the outside. The terrace of the nearby restaurant Meson del Caballo Blanco, or House of the White Horse, has great views of the surrounding countryside and the Pyrenees.
In the narrow alleys starting next to the cathedral, you can find, among other things, a pharmacy intended for pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela, where you can get a discount with a pilgrimage pass.
There are many similar shops in the city, as well as pilgrims in the street scene. One was so exhausted that we feared he would wither away for good before our eyes, the other had such a huge trekking pole that one would have thought it would be more of a hindrance than a benefit.
First landing in the city, we were actually mistaken for pilgrims as we walked from the bus station to our hostel with our hiking boots on, carrying our packbags.
P.S. We can’t promise you a room at Alberto’s, but you can stay at *Maria Asun’s pénsion at a reasonable price. Just click the link to check availability.
