Every year, coverage of the encierro repeats the same numbers: roughly 100 volunteers on the route each morning, sixteen medical posts, ambulances staged along the course, and a goal of getting a gored runner into a hospital bed inside ten minutes. What almost none of that coverage does is name the hospital itself, or explain that the building receiving Pamplona’s gored runners today is not the same institution, under the same name, that received them even a decade and a half ago.
That gap matters because the hospital’s own history and the run’s own injury record run on parallel tracks that rarely get told together. The Hospital Universitario de Navarra, the trauma center at the end of every ambulance ride from the bull run route, is the product of a 2010 merger of three separate Pamplona hospitals and a 2021 name change that most visitors, and even some longtime followers of the festival, have never heard about. Understanding which hospital treated which runner, in which decade, under which name, gives a clearer picture of what “taken to hospital” has actually meant across more than a century of the encierro.
This account draws on the hospital’s own published institutional history, the San Fermín festival’s own death-by-death record of encierro fatalities, and Navarra regional press coverage of the hospital’s 2010 merger and 2021 rename, cross-checked against each other for dates and legal detail.
From a 16th-Century Almshouse to a New Hospital in Barañáin
Pamplona’s public hospital tradition did not begin with a modern building. It began with the Hospital de la Misericordia, which had operated in the center of the city since the 1500s, caring for the sick and poor as a charitable institution long before modern medicine existed in any recognizable form. By the early 20th century, that centuries-old building could no longer serve a growing city.
According to the hospital’s own published history, construction of a new hospital began in 1906 on land in the Barañáin soto, a riverside meadow donated by a private citizen, Concepción Benítez, for the purpose. It took more than two decades to complete the transition. Patients and operations finally moved from the old Hospital de la Misericordia to the new site in 1932 and 1933, and the institution took the name it would carry for the rest of the twentieth century: the Hospital de Navarra. In 1982, Navarra’s maternity and orphanage institution, the Maternidad y Orfanato de Navarra, was folded into the hospital as its Obstetrics and Gynecology department, expanding it well beyond its original trauma and general medicine mission.
For most of the twentieth century, including the years covered by the run’s most documented gorings, this was the name on the building at the other end of the ambulance ride. A runner gored on Santo Domingo or at the Plaza de Toros in 1961, or on Calle Estafeta in the 1970s, was taken to the Hospital de Navarra, full stop. That single, stable name lasted roughly eighty years, from the 1932-33 transition until 2010.
Two Mergers, Three Names: How Hospital de Navarra Became Hospital Universitario de Navarra
In April 2010, under Decreto Foral 19/2010, the Government of Navarra unified the public hospitals of greater Pamplona into a single institution. The Hospital de Navarra, the Hospital Virgen del Camino, and the Clínica Ubarmin, along with four specialized health centers, were combined into what was named the Complejo Hospitalario de Navarra (CHN). The stated goal was coordination: rather than three separate hospital systems competing for staff, equipment, and specialty coverage across one metropolitan area, Navarra’s health service wanted one coordinated complex.
For eleven years, that was the name. Then, in October 2021, the Complejo Hospitalario de Navarra formally became the Hospital Universitario de Navarra, or Nafarroako Unibertsitate Ospitalea in Basque, abbreviated HUN/NUO. The rename formalized, in the institution’s own name, a university-hospital legal status it had already held since 2018 through its teaching relationship with the Universidad Pública de Navarra. It was a legal and administrative change more than a physical one. The buildings, the trauma bay, and the staff receiving encierro injuries every July did not move. Only the name on the door did, for the second time in eleven years.
It is worth noting that the festival’s own website still describes the facility receiving gored runners as the Complejo Hospitalario de Navarra in its current medical information pages, years after that name was retired. That is not an error worth dwelling on; it is a small, honest sign of how recent and low-profile the 2021 change still is, even among people who cover the festival closely.
What the Numbers on the Route Actually Represent
Behind the now-familiar statistics about encierro medical care sits an emergency response network considerably older, and more layered, than most coverage suggests. Cruz Roja Navarra, the regional Red Cross, was founded in Pamplona on July 5, 1864, a civic institution more than a century older than the modern medical choreography built around the run. Today it runs a ten-day “foreseeable risk” health operation covering the entire festival, drawing roughly 300 volunteers across all San Fermín events. On the encierro route specifically, close to 100 volunteers work each morning, backed by ten medicalized ambulances staged at fixed points: two at Ayuntamiento, two at Mercaderes, five at Telefónica, the stretch that sees the highest concentration of falls and pile-ups, and one at the Plaza de Toros.
Cruz Roja does not run the operation alone. DYA Navarra, a separate volunteer emergency medical organization, staffs the festival independently and publishes its own daily figures, often treating anywhere from roughly 85 to nearly 100 people across a single 24-hour festival period, with a meaningful share of those transported to hospital by ambulance. Coverage that simply says “the Red Cross handles medical care” is collapsing two distinct organizations into one.
Along the route itself, roughly sixteen medical posts are positioned approximately every 50 meters, each staffed by at least a physician and a nurse, so that a fallen or gored runner is rarely more than a short sprint from trained care. The design target, repeated consistently across sources, is to have a gored runner stabilized and inside a hospital in under ten minutes.
The legal and financial framework behind all of this, laid out on the festival’s own site, is straightforward: anyone injured on the route is treated immediately, no questions asked. Residents of Navarra and neighboring provinces are covered by Navarra’s public health service at no direct cost. Visitors from outside Spain are treated first and billed afterward through travel or medical insurance, and the festival’s own materials flag that some standard insurance policies specifically exclude bull-running injuries from coverage. Pamplona’s city government and the Casa de Misericordia, the historic charitable body long tied to organizing the bull fair, also carry separate insurance covering death or permanent disability.
Four Deaths, Five Decades: What the Hospital Record Actually Shows
The festival’s own record of encierro deaths, maintained on its website, makes it possible to trace what “taken to hospital” has meant in practice across the decades, using named cases rather than aggregate statistics.
In 1961, Vicente Urrizola Istúriz, 32, was gored near the slope of Santo Domingo, close to the building on that street now home to the Museo de Navarra, itself a former Pamplona hospital that relocated to a new site in 1932. The goring went largely unnoticed in the crowd. He died in hospital roughly thirty hours later, and only then did the full seriousness of what had happened register with the city. (The festival’s own record of this case calls the building “the Military Hospital”; Encierro’s own sourced history of that building places its hospital closure in 1932 and its formal opening as a museum in 1956, five years before this goring, so the more rigorously documented date is used here.)
In 1995, Matthew Peter Tasio, a 22-year-old American tourist, was gored by a bull named Castellano at Plaza Consistorial. The horn severed his aorta; he lost roughly 90 percent of his blood before reaching care. He was inside the Hospital de Navarra eight minutes after the goring, an extraordinarily fast transport even by the standards this system aims for, but he arrived unconscious and died shortly after admission. His case is cited on the festival’s own site as proof that speed alone cannot outrun a severed aorta.
In 2003, Fermín Etxeberria Irañeta, 63, a runner who had taken part since he was fourteen, suffered a severe skull injury from a bull at Mercaderes. He underwent surgery three days later, then spent nearly two and a half months in the Intensive Care Unit of the Hospital de Navarra in a coma on artificial respiration before being moved to a general ward. He ultimately died at a separate Pamplona clinic that September, roughly eleven weeks after the goring, a reminder that surviving the run and surviving the injury are not the same outcome.
In 2009, Daniel Jimeno Romero, 27, was gored in the neck at the Telefónica stretch, the wound severing a major vein. He was admitted in respiratory arrest and died despite treatment. His is the most recent encierro fatality on the festival’s own record.
Read together, these four cases span the hospital’s own institutional history. Urrizola’s 1961 death predates the building’s later expansions by decades. Tasio’s and Etxeberria’s deaths both occurred at the Hospital de Navarra under that name, years before the 2010 merger. Jimeno’s 2009 death also predates the merger; the institution that admitted him was still legally the Hospital de Navarra, not yet the Complejo Hospitalario de Navarra it would become the following year. The medical response has clearly professionalized and accelerated across that span. What has not changed is that the most catastrophic gorings, the ones that sever a major vessel or cause severe cranial trauma, remain beyond what any transport time can fix.
FAQ
What hospital treats injuries from the running of the bulls in Pamplona?
Runners injured on the encierro route are taken to the Hospital Universitario de Navarra, the trauma center formed in 2010 when the Government of Navarra merged the Hospital de Navarra, the Hospital Virgen del Camino, and the Clínica Ubarmin into one complex, then renamed in 2021 to reflect its university-hospital status.
How fast is medical care during the Pamplona bull run?
The route is staffed with roughly sixteen medical posts spaced about every 50 meters, backed by around ten ambulances and close to 100 volunteers from Cruz Roja Navarra and DYA Navarra each morning. The consistent design target across sources is to have a gored runner stabilized and in a hospital bed within ten minutes.
Has anyone died from the Pamplona bull run after reaching the hospital?
Yes. The festival’s own death record documents cases in which runners reached hospital care, sometimes within minutes, and still died, either shortly after admission or, in at least one case, after nearly two and a half months of intensive care. Fast transport reduces risk but does not eliminate it for the most severe gorings.
Is medical treatment free for tourists injured in the encierro?
Everyone injured on the route receives immediate treatment regardless of nationality. Residents of Navarra and neighboring provinces are covered by the public health service at no direct cost, while visitors from outside Spain are treated first and billed afterward through travel or medical insurance, some of which specifically excludes bull-running injuries.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.