The history of the encierro is usually told in a single sentence: bulls needed to get from the corrals to the bullring, and Pamplona’s narrow streets were the route, so a crowd formed around the transfer. That much is true, and it is where almost every account of the run’s origin stops. What gets left out is the part that actually explains what the encierro is today. The job that created the run, walking bulls overland from pastures outside the city and hurrying them through the final stretch of streets before the afternoon’s bull-related festivities, had already stopped being necessary by the second half of the 19th century, once the railway began delivering bulls to Pamplona directly in freight cars. The run did not stop with it.
That distinction changes what the encierro actually is. It is not an unbroken ritual still performed for the reason it began, the way a harvest festival marks an actual harvest. For more than a century and a half now, the running of the bulls has continued almost entirely because people wanted it to keep existing, not because Pamplona needed a way to move cattle through its own streets. The town council spent hundreds of years trying to suppress the very activity that is now the centerpiece of Sanfermines, and lost. Understanding that fight, rather than the one-line explanation about cattle transport that shows up in most travel writing, is what separates a real account of the encierro’s history from a postcard caption.
This account is built from the Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s own tourism-affiliated history record, cross-checked against Spanish national and regional press (Diario de Noticias de Navarra and El Debate), and the Spanish-language Wikipedia entry’s own citations to Luis del Campo Jesús’s institutional monograph series on Navarrese popular culture, published by the Diputación Foral de Navarra. Every date below is confirmed by at least one source independent of the others.
From “Entrada” to Encierro
The earliest documented references to bull-related street events in Pamplona date to 1385, during the reign of Carlos II of Navarre (some accounts place the custom slightly earlier, to 1365, though 1385 is the better-supported figure). At that point, bulls destined for the city’s early bull-related celebrations were walked on foot from the surrounding countryside. The final stretch of that journey, through the city’s own streets, was covered at dawn, timed deliberately to disturb residents as little as possible, and at a run, hurried along by mounted pastores using long poles and slings.
Crucially, this event was not called an “encierro.” For most of its history it was known as “la entrada,” and the word “encierro” did not come into common use for the run itself until the middle of the 19th century. A mounted herder rode ahead at a gallop to warn residents the herd was coming. A handful of young men ran well ahead of and away from the animals themselves, purely for their own amusement, which already put them in violation of the town council’s orders. That detail matters: from the very start, the people running were not the ones doing the actual job of moving the cattle.
The custom of moving bulls through the streets predates the San Fermín festival itself. In 1591, Pamplona’s civil and religious authorities moved the city’s annual festivities from October 10, which had marked the end of the agricultural year and coincided with the region’s livestock markets, to July 7, the feast day of San Fermín. The cattle-driving custom was folded into the saint’s festival at that point. It was not invented for it.
A Race That Was Illegal by Law for Centuries
Pamplona’s town council consistently treated the sight of young men running alongside the herd as an act of disobedience, describing it as a tolerated minor evil rather than a sanctioned event. The race itself was formally prohibited for generations. In practice, it was allowed to continue because enforcing a ban proved impossible.
The earliest written regulations, estimated to date from 1717 and 1731, did not legalize or organize a race at all. They fined the mistreatment of the bulls in the street, a penalty of four ducados and confiscation of the offending goading pole, aimed at protecting the animals from injury before that afternoon’s events, not at giving runners any legal standing. Navarra’s own historical archives, the Archivo Real y General de Navarra and the Archivo Municipal de Pamplona, document taurine street celebrations going back to at least the 15th century, along with repeated friction between local custom and royal or municipal orders trying to shut the practice down.
This is the part most short histories skip entirely: for roughly four centuries, the activity now sold as Pamplona’s signature tradition existed in a kind of legal limbo, openly practiced and openly banned at the same time, with the city’s own authorities unable or unwilling to make the ban stick.
The Fencing Existed for the Herd First, the Runners Second
Before 1776, the street mouths (bocacalles) along the transfer route were not fenced at all. They were closed off with hung canopies and blankets, simply to keep the herd contained and moving in the correct direction. Proper wooden fencing, the vallado still used today, was not introduced in Pamplona until 1776, nearly four centuries after the earliest documented cattle drives through the city.
Even then, the fencing was a single barrier, not the double-fenced safety corridor familiar to anyone who has seen the modern route. Double fencing was not introduced until 1941, and it came directly out of tragedy rather than foresight. In July 1939, a bull named Liebrero broke through the single fence then in place and seriously gored a bystander. The double vallado, which now creates the gap used by dobladores, medical staff, and accredited press along the route, exists because of that specific incident, not as part of some original safety design.
When the Job Ended and the Ordinances Began
Between 1843 and 1856, in the span of just thirteen years, the encierro’s endpoint changed repeatedly. The event entered the city through two different medieval gates and finished at three different temporary bullrings, a direct result of Pamplona not yet having a single permanent Plaza de Toros. The first fixed ring was not built until 1852.
During roughly this same window, the railway reached Pamplona. Bulls began arriving in freight cars rather than being walked overland from breeding pastures outside the city, which made the original function of the encierro, herding livestock through city streets on the final leg of a long walk, unnecessary. According to the Ayuntamiento-affiliated tourism record, this development nearly ended the tradition outright. What kept it alive was not logistical need but sustained public demand, pushing back against the authorities’ own recurring wish to ban the event completely.
Once the practical job had lapsed, the council shifted from suppressing the run to controlling it. In 1867, Pamplona issued its first ordinance treating the encierro as a fixed, regulated event, setting its start time, its route, and its internal rules. A separate ordinance, dated June 28, 1876, under mayor Víctor Bengoechea y Osácar, regulated the runners themselves for the first time: obeying the pastores’ instructions became mandatory, and jumping into the route while carrying a bag or while intoxicated was explicitly banned.
The current bullring, the third in the city’s history, opened in 1922 and forced one final change to how the route itself changed: bulls now turn left at the end of Calle Estafeta instead of right, as they had under the previous ring. The modern 8:00 a.m. start time was not fixed until 1990. Before that, the run began at dawn, historically around 6:00 a.m. solar time, a detail still preserved in old Navarrese jota lyrics that tell late risers they will find themselves running in front of the bulls if they sleep past five.
Frequently Asked Questions
When did the encierro start?
The earliest documented references to bull-related street events in Pamplona date to 1385, during the reign of Carlos II of Navarre, though the custom was known then as “la entrada,” not “el encierro.” Bulls were walked overland from the countryside, and the final stretch through city streets was run at dawn. The word “encierro” itself did not become the common term for the event until the middle of the 19th century.
Why was running with the bulls illegal for so long?
Pamplona’s town council viewed young men joining the herd as an act of disobedience rather than a legitimate activity, and banned it by law for centuries even though it was tolerated in practice. Early 18th-century regulations, from 1717 and 1731, fined mistreatment of the bulls themselves, not unauthorized running, showing that protecting the animals, not organizing a race, was the original concern.
Is the encierro older than the San Fermín festival?
Yes. The cattle-driving custom that became the encierro predates the July 7 festival date. Pamplona’s festivities were originally held on October 10, tied to the agricultural calendar, and were only moved to San Fermín’s feast day in 1591. The run was folded into the existing saint’s festival, not created for it.
Did the railroad end the running of the bulls?
The railroad ended the encierro’s original practical function. Once bulls could be delivered to Pamplona by rail instead of walked overland from outside pastures, the city no longer needed to move livestock through its own streets at all, and the tradition nearly disappeared as a result. It survived on public demand alone, which is why the city moved to formally regulate the race, in 1867 and again in 1876, rather than let it fade out.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.