Every June 29, the town of Haro in La Rioja empties tens of thousands of liters of red wine onto itself in the Batalla del Vino, and nearly every English language account of why repeats the same origin story: a 13th century boundary dispute with the neighboring town of Miranda de Ebro, settled by a judge who ordered the townspeople to mark their land with purple banners every San Pedro’s Day, a ritual that supposedly curdled into wine throwing centuries later. Spain’s own government tourism board tells a version of this story. So do the two most visited English language sites dedicated to the festival.
Haro’s own archives do not support it. The town’s rigorously documented history, built from municipal account books, a century of local newspaper coverage, and a 2010 research presentation convened specifically to correct false beliefs about the festival, traces the real origin to something entirely different: a religious pilgrimage to a hermit’s tomb, formalized by the town council in the 15th century, with the wine throwing itself emerging as an unplanned, repeatedly complained about nuisance three centuries later. The event did not even carry the name Batalla del Vino until a 1949 newspaper chronicle used it for the first time.
This matters beyond trivia. A border dispute origin makes for a punchier headline, but it erases the actual story: an eremitic saint who lived on a cliff above the Ebro, a town council that spent public money on his festival for five hundred years, and generations of Riojans whose newspaper complaints about ruined dresses and rowdy conduct are the closest thing that exists to a paper trail. That paper trail is what this article follows, cross checked against the town’s own festival records, Spain’s own tourism listing, and the archival research presented at Haro’s Casa del Santo in 2010.
The Real Origin: A Hermit’s Tomb, Not a Property Line
The documented history of what became the Batalla del Vino starts with a person, not a dispute. San Felices de Bilibio was a hermit and teacher of San Millán who lived and died on the cliffs above the Ebro, known as the Riscos de Bilibio, in the 6th century. After his death, residents of the nearby settlement of Bilibio began visiting the cave where he was buried, and as that settlement emptied out and its people relocated to Haro by the 10th century, they carried the devotion with them.
By the 15th century, that informal veneration had grown popular enough that the Concejo de Haro, the town council, took the unusual step of formally organizing the pilgrimage, known as a romería, to the Riscos de Bilibio. Municipal account books from 1462 and 1469 already record town spending on San Juan and San Pedro day festivities, evidence that some form of celebration existed even before the pilgrimage itself is documented. The first hermitage chapel at the site was built starting in 1710, and San Felices was formally named patron saint of Haro in 1644, with a religious brotherhood, or cofradía, founded in his honor in 1655.
None of this early history involves wine throwing. For roughly four centuries, the romería to Bilibio was exactly what it sounds like: a walk to a hermitage, a Mass, and a communal lunch afterward. The wine came later, and it came from the lunch, not from a legal dispute.
Where the Border Dispute Legend Actually Comes From
The competing story, the one repeated by Spain’s government tourism site and by dedicated English language festival guides, holds that in 1237 a judge named Sancho Martínez de Leiva, acting under Ferdinand III of Castile, ordered Haro to mark its territorial boundary with Miranda de Ebro using purple banners planted annually on San Pedro’s Day, and that this ritual eventually became the wine battle after a 1710 mass ended in celebration.
The purple banner detail is real. To this day, the Regidor Síndico, a ceremonial civic office first recorded under that name in 1888, carries the city’s purple pendón up to the hermitage and plants it at its highest point during the romería. What is not real, or at least not documented, is the specific legal origin story attached to it. Haro’s own historical researchers have traced this claim back to a single passing, undocumented remark in a history book written by local historian Domingo Hergueta, who himself presented it only as a supposition, not a sourced fact. Property disputes between Haro and Miranda de Ebro did occur between the 11th and 13th centuries, and that much is verifiable in municipal records. But no surviving document connects those disputes to the banner ritual, to a judge named Sancho Martínez de Leiva, or to the year 1237 specifically.
This is exactly the kind of gap that invites a tidy legend to fill it, and it did. On June 26, 2010, historian Fernando de la Fuente presented research at Haro’s Casa del Santo, organized by the Cofradía de San Felices de Bilibio for the explicit purpose of correcting inaccurate beliefs about the festival’s origins that had accumulated over the 20th century in the absence of rigorous study. The boundary dispute story was one of the beliefs addressed. It persists anyway, including on spain.info, the country’s own government tourism platform, which states the border dispute as the festival’s origin without qualification.
How the Wine Throwing Actually Started
If the border dispute did not create the Batalla del Vino, the newspaper record shows what did: boredom, good wine, and a communal picnic lunch that ran too long. The Diario de La Rioja’s June 29, 1898 edition already describes romería goers returning to town “with a few less jugs of wine in the cellars and a few more between the body and the clothes,” a wry acknowledgment that people were already coming back stained.
Over the following decades, local papers tracked the custom’s rocky reception. A 1905 report noted fewer women attending because their light colored dresses kept getting ruined. A 1906 follow up worried the tradition would keep declining unless authorities intervened. A 1929 feature in the magazine Blanco y Negro described pilgrims “baptizing with wine” everyone they encountered on the walk back from the hermitage to the Plaza de la Paz, calling it a custom of only a few years’ standing at that point. None of this reads like a centuries old legal ritual. It reads like an informal custom slowly hardening into tradition, one newspaper complaint at a time.
The name itself came late. The event was first referred to in print as the Batalla del Vino in a 1949 chronicle by journalist Enrique Hermosilla Díez for Diario La Rioja. Sixteen years later, on August 8, 1965, Spain’s Ministry of Information and Tourism granted the romería formal recognition as a Fiesta de Interés Turístico, following a joint request from the Cofradía de San Felices and the Haro town council. It reached the country’s highest tier of festival recognition, Fiesta de Interés Turístico Nacional, on March 22, 2011.
What the Battle Actually Looks Like Today
However it started, the modern Batalla del Vino is unmistakable. Participants gather before seven in the morning dressed in white with a red pañuelo tied around the neck, the same color combination worn at San Fermín, and make their way roughly six kilometers north of Haro to the Riscos de Bilibio, on foot, in tractor drawn trailers, or by car.
At the hermitage, the Regidor Síndico opens the procession on horseback and plants the city’s purple pendón atop the cliffs before Mass begins. When the Mass ends, a rocket fires and the battle formally starts. Wineskins, the same kind of bota that gets passed around during San Fermín, along with bottles, backpack sprayers, buckets, and water pistols, all count as legal weapons, and by around 10:30 in the morning, when supplies typically run dry, nearly everyone present is soaked purple. Press estimates put the total at around 20,000 liters used in 2007 and between 30,000 and 40,000 liters in 2008, a year the date fell on a weekend and drew a larger crowd.
Once the wine runs out, the crowd dries off and eats, traditionally caracoles or chuletillas al sarmiento, lamb chops grilled over burning vine cuttings, a fitting meal in the middle of Rioja wine country. The return to town, known as “las vueltas,” follows Calle Navarra back into the Plaza de la Paz, where a brass band plays and, later, vaquillas are released into the ring. Haro is not the only town in this part of northern Spain that turns communal red wine into a street tradition. Further south in Navarra, zurracapote does the same thing in cold, spiced punch form, poured from jugs during San Fermín rather than thrown by the liter.
Getting There From Pamplona
For anyone already routing through northern Spain for San Fermín, the Batalla del Vino falls exactly one week before the festival’s July 6 txupinazo, making it a genuine option for travelers with time to spare. Haro sits roughly 127 kilometers, about 79 miles, from Pamplona, a drive of around an hour and a half. There is no direct train between the two cities; rail connections route through Miranda de Ebro. There is no direct bus either, with most routes transferring through Logroño and taking closer to four hours door to door. A rental car is the most practical option for making the trip in a single day.
Haro itself sits inside the heart of DOCa Rioja, Spain’s oldest and only Denominación de Origen Calificada wine region. Anyone curious what the classification tiers on a bottle of Rioja actually mean before tasting their way through the town’s bodegas can get the full breakdown of Crianza, Reserva, and Gran Reserva here.
Frequently Asked Questions
When is the Batalla del Vino in Haro?
Every year on June 29, the feast day of San Pedro (Saint Peter). The date does not move even when it falls on a weekday, following a 1977 town referendum in which residents voted to keep the fixed date rather than shift it to the nearest Sunday.
How did the Batalla del Vino actually start?
It began as a religious pilgrimage, or romería, to the tomb of the 6th century hermit San Felices de Bilibio, formally organized by Haro’s town council starting in the 15th century. The wine throwing itself emerged later, as an unplanned custom during the post-Mass lunch, first documented in local newspapers in the late 1890s and not formally named “Batalla del Vino” until 1949. A popular alternate story involving a 13th century border dispute and a judge named Sancho Martínez de Leiva is not supported by any surviving archival document.
How much wine is used in the Batalla del Vino?
Contemporary press reports cited by Haro’s own archival record put the figure at around 20,000 liters in 2007 and 30,000 to 40,000 liters in 2008, a year the festival fell on a weekend. Broader online estimates in the 40,000 to 50,000 liter range circulate widely but are not tied to a specific sourced year.
How far is Haro from Pamplona?
About 127 kilometers, roughly 79 miles, and around an hour and a half by car. There is no direct train or bus connection between the two cities.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.