Ask most travel guides how big Irati Forest is and you get the same soft answer: “one of the largest beech and fir forests in Europe.” That phrasing is lifted almost word for word from Navarra’s own tourism board, and it is true, but it is also incomplete. Irati is not just one of the largest. At roughly 17,179 hectares, it is the second-largest continental beech-fir forest in Europe, outranked only by Germany’s Black Forest, and the region’s own government now backs that ranking with two separate UNESCO designations rather than one.
The distinction matters for more than bragging rights. A visitor deciding between a day in Irati and a day somewhere else in the Pyrenees is better served by a real number than a marketing adjective, and the forest’s actual literary connection, the one that ties it back to Pamplona and the fiesta this site covers, gets flattened into a vague footnote almost everywhere it is mentioned. The real sequence, as Ernest Hemingway wrote it, is more specific and more interesting than “Hemingway loved this forest too.”
This article is built from Navarra’s official tourism and biosphere-reserve documentation, UNESCO’s own World Heritage and Biosphere Reserve records, and the documented text and publication history of “The Sun Also Rises,” cross-checked against independent literary scholarship on Hemingway’s own travel dates.
The Forest by the Numbers
Irati Forest, called Selva de Irati in Spanish and Iratiko Oihana in Basque, spans the Aézcoa and Salazar valleys in the northeastern Navarrese Pyrenees and continues across the French border into the Cize and Soule valleys of the Atlantic Pyrenees. On the Spanish side alone it covers approximately 17,000 to 17,179 hectares, making it the largest single forest mass in Navarra and the second-largest beech-fir forest in continental Europe, after Germany’s Black Forest.
The forest carries two separate UNESCO designations, earned seven years apart. In 2017, Irati was inscribed as an extension component of the UNESCO World Heritage listing “Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe”, a transnational serial site that now covers 93 component forests across 18 countries. Then, on July 5, 2024, UNESCO named Irati a new Biosphere Reserve in its own right, a separate and more recent recognition covering 537 square kilometers across the Aézcoa and Salazar valleys and home to roughly 2,435 residents. The two listings measure different things: World Heritage status recognizes the forest itself as an irreplaceable natural monument, while Biosphere Reserve status recognizes the surrounding valleys as a working model of people and forest coexisting. Irati is one of a small number of places in Europe that holds both.
Within the wider forest, the Lizardoia reserve protects 64 hectares of the most ecologically valuable core, including about 20 hectares of untouched woodland where beech and fir specimens reach 40 meters. Two further reserves, Mendilatz and Tristuibartea, add additional layers of protection.
From Ship Masts to a Royal Arms Factory: Irati’s Working History
Irati has been a working forest since at least the 15th and 16th centuries, and that history is part of why UNESCO’s own assessments single it out. Its tall, straight fir trunks were prized for ship masts, and logs were floated downriver to sawmills using purpose-built sluices, small dam-like structures that released controlled floods to carry timber through the forest’s rivers during the low water of summer.
In the late 18th century, King Charles III ordered a royal arms factory built at the Orbaizeta ironworks, inside the forest, taking advantage of the area’s timber, its iron ore deposits, and its water power. The Real Fábrica de Armas de Orbaizeta became economically significant through the 19th century; its ruins survive today and are a declared Bien de Interés Cultural, an official Asset of Cultural Interest. The Irabia Reservoir, also inside the forest, was completed in 1922 and remains a landmark for hikers approaching from the Aézcoa side.
What makes Irati unusual is that centuries of active commercial logging did not leave it degraded. UNESCO’s own conservation assessments credit the forest’s excellent state to the communal stewardship practiced by the Aézcoa and Salazar valley municipalities, who have managed the woodland as shared common land for generations rather than as a resource to exhaust.
Hemingway Went to Irati First, Not After
In “The Sun Also Rises,” published in Spanish translation as “Fiesta,” Hemingway sends his narrator Jake Barnes and his friend Bill Gorton to Burguete and the Irati River for five days of trout fishing. In the novel’s own structure, that trip happens before the group travels on to Pamplona for the running of the bulls and the chaos of the fiesta, not after. The quiet of the river is the calm Hemingway builds deliberately, right before he lets the noise of San Fermín take over the book’s later chapters.
Some retellings reverse that order or leave it vague, treating the Irati chapters as a recovery trip once the fiesta has worn the characters out. The published text does not support that reading. Hemingway’s own first visit to the area, according to his biographer Michael Reynolds, followed a slightly different timeline than his fiction: Reynolds records that Hemingway arrived in Burguete on July 13, 1924, after that year’s bullfights had already concluded, and returned the following year to find the river’s fishing diminished by logging activity upstream. The trip that inspired the novel and the trip Jake Barnes actually takes in it are not identical. What stays fixed is where Hemingway placed the Irati chapters on the page: before the fiesta, not after.
Hemingway was far from San Fermín’s only literary or celebrity visitor over the decades, a subject this site covers in more depth elsewhere. But the Irati connection is the one most often summarized wrong, which is exactly why it is worth getting the sequence right.
Getting to Irati: Two Valleys, Two Different Approaches
Irati has no single entrance. Visitors reach it through one of two valleys, and each delivers a noticeably different experience.
The western approach runs through the Aézcoa Valley, via the village of Orbaizeta, roughly 60 kilometers from Pamplona. This route passes closest to the Royal Arms Factory ruins and the Irabia Reservoir, and the Arrazola information point serves as the main trailhead, with forest rangers, parking, and picnic areas.
The eastern approach runs through the Salazar Valley, via Ochagavía, roughly 85 kilometers from Pamplona along the NA-140. Ochagavía itself, a village of white houses and cobbled streets at the confluence of the Zatoya and Anduña rivers with a documented history stretching to the 11th century, is widely regarded as the most attractive gateway to the forest and has its own story worth reading before the drive. From Ochagavía, it is another 23 kilometers along the NA-2012 to the Casas de Irati “Virgen de las Nieves” visitor centre, the main services hub on this side of the forest.
Serious hikers can cross the forest on two long-distance routes: the GR-11 Pyrenean trail, whose stages 6 and 7 run through the Aézcoa and Salazar valleys, and the GR-12 Euskal Herria route, whose stage 7 also passes through Irati. Pico Ori, at 2,017 meters, is the westernmost 2,000-meter peak in the entire Pyrenees and the high point of the Salazar Valley side, with what local guides consistently describe as one of the best panoramic views in Navarra.
What Lives in Irati
The forest’s canopy is dominated by common beech, with white fir forming mixed stands in the lower elevations and becoming the more predominant species higher up and on north-facing slopes. Birch, holly, maple, and linden fill in the understory alongside ferns and wild blackberry.
Red deer are the forest’s signature large mammal, and their autumn rutting season, known locally as the berrea, draws visitors specifically to hear the stags call. Roe deer, wild boar, badgers, pine martens, otters, and the rare Pyrenean desman also live within the reserve. Birdlife is a major part of Irati’s protected status: the forest is a designated Special Protection Area for birds, sheltering black woodpeckers, white-backed woodpeckers, and birds of prey including the bearded vulture, peregrine falcon, and golden eagle. In 2015, the discovery of a carnivorous sundew plant and a wetland rush species inside the forest contributed to Irati’s inclusion in a European-level habitat protection program, one more layer added on top of its existing World Heritage and Biosphere Reserve status.
Frequently Asked Questions
How big is Irati Forest?
Irati covers approximately 17,000 to 17,179 hectares on the Spanish side, extending further into France. That makes it the largest single forest mass in Navarra and the second-largest beech-fir forest in continental Europe.
Is Irati Forest the largest forest in Europe?
No. It is the second-largest continental beech-fir forest in Europe, ranking behind Germany’s Black Forest. It is, however, the largest forest of any kind in Navarra, and it holds both UNESCO World Heritage status, since 2017, and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve status, since 2024.
How far is Irati Forest from Pamplona?
By the western route through Orbaizeta, it is roughly 60 kilometers. By the eastern route through Ochagavía, it is roughly 85 kilometers. Both are approached by different valleys and offer different landmarks along the way.
Did Hemingway really visit Irati Forest?
Yes. Hemingway fished the Irati River near Burguete and used the area as the setting for the fishing-trip chapters of “The Sun Also Rises,” where the trip takes place before the characters reach Pamplona for the fiesta. His own first visit, per his biographer, was in July 1924, after that year’s bullfights had already ended.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.