Most visitors to the Basque Country assume Bilbao is its capital. It is not, and the reasons why reveal something most travel coverage skips entirely. The Basque Parliament, the headquarters of the Basque Government, and the residence of the Lehendakari (the region’s president) all sit in Vitoria-Gasteiz, a city that most itineraries route around entirely on the way between Bilbao’s Guggenheim and San Sebastián’s beaches.
Skipping Vitoria-Gasteiz on the assumption that Bilbao is the region’s political center means missing the actual seat of Basque institutional life, one of the best-preserved medieval old towns in northern Spain, and a cathedral restoration project famous enough to have inspired a bestselling novel. It also means misunderstanding a genuinely interesting piece of Basque political history: the Basque capital was not chosen for its size or fame. It was assigned the role by a specific legal document, decades after Bilbao had already become the region’s largest and best-known city.
This account draws on the Basque Government’s own published explainer of the 1979 Statute of Gernika, the European Commission’s published citation for the 2012 European Green Capital award, and the Fundación Catedral Santa María’s documentation of its own restoration project, alongside standard Iberian medieval historiography for the city’s founding.
Vitoria-Gasteiz Was Founded By a King of Navarre, Not the Basques
The hill where Vitoria-Gasteiz now stands was already inhabited before the city existed in any formal sense. A Vasconic settlement called Gasteiz sat on the same site and was walled by the 11th century, the last significant elevation on the otherwise flat plain of Álava, which made it a defensive prize contested by the neighboring kingdoms.
In 1181, Sancho VI “el Sabio” (“the Wise”), King of Navarre, founded a fortified town on that hill and named it Nova Victoria, in memory of an older, long-vanished settlement called Victoriacum. He built it as a military outpost to defend Navarre’s western frontier against the Kingdom of Castile. For 18 years, the city that would become the seat of Basque government was Navarrese territory, not Basque or Castilian.
That did not last. In 1199, Castilian forces under Alfonso VIII laid siege to the town for nine months before capturing it and annexing it into the Kingdom of Castile. The city has belonged to Castile, and later Spain, ever since. But the founding charter and the choice of hilltop belong to Navarre’s medieval kings, a detail that rarely makes it into standard Basque Country travel coverage and that connects this city, if only briefly, to the same royal line responsible for Sancho III el Mayor’s reshaping of the Camino de Santiago through Navarra, a century and a half earlier.
How a 1979 Statute, Not Geography, Made Vitoria-Gasteiz the Capital
The modern story is where the real misconception lives. The Statute of Gernika, the document that created the modern Basque Autonomous Community, was approved by referendum on October 25, 1979, and enacted as organic law that December. In a single, brief article, it names “Gasteiz-Vitoria” as the seat of the Basque Parliament and the Basque Government. It does not use the word “capital” the way the Spanish Constitution names Madrid, or the Catalan Statute names Barcelona. Vitoria-Gasteiz’s status rests on that word, “seat,” not on any formal declaration of capital status, a distinction that echoes a similar reversal in how Pamplona became the capital of Navarra: the kingdom took its name from the city, not the other way around.
Even the transition was not immediate. The first Basque Parliament held its inaugural session on March 31, 1980, not in Vitoria-Gasteiz but in Gernika, at the seat of the General Assemblies of Bizkaia. The permanent parliamentary seat was not established in Vitoria-Gasteiz until February 1, 1982, in the building on Becerro de Bengoa street that still houses it today.
What actually occupies the city now is concrete enough. The Basque Parliament meets in the former Convento de Santa Clara, with 75 members representing the three historic territories of Álava, Gipuzkoa, and Biscay. The Basque Government’s administrative headquarters sit in the Lakua district. And the Lehendakari lives in the Palacio de Ajuria Enea, a private mansion built in 1918 for a local entrepreneur named Serafín Ajuria before the Basque Government purchased it from the Provincial Council of Álava in 1980. Bilbao remains larger, richer, and far more visited, and its own identity runs through events like Aste Nagusia, the nine-day August festival a 1978 citizen contest invented rather than inherited. But Vitoria-Gasteiz remains the place where Basque law is written.
The Almond-Shaped Old Town: Eight Centuries of the Same Streets
Sancho VI’s medieval builders had to work with the shape of the hill they were given, and the result is a layout that has survived largely intact for more than 800 years. The old quarter of Vitoria-Gasteiz still traces an almond shape around the original defensive walls, its streets radiating outward and named for the trades that once lined them: Correría, Herrería for the ironworkers, Zapatería for the shoemakers, Cuchillería for the knifemakers, Pintorería for the painters.
At the center sits the Plaza de la Virgen Blanca, the old town’s traditional heart and the natural starting point for exploring streets that have kept their medieval trade names into the present day. The compact scale of the district, wrapped tightly around a single hill rather than sprawled across a river valley the way Bilbao’s old quarter is, means a visitor can walk the entire historic core in an afternoon and still see every layer of the city’s political and religious history within a few blocks of each other.
The Cathedral That Inspired a Bestselling Novelist
The old town’s Catedral de Santa María is not a typical cathedral visit. The 13th-century Gothic building closed to the public in 1994 after a partial vault collapse revealed serious structural problems, and rather than close the site during restoration, the Fundación Catedral Santa María opened it up. Its “Abierto por Obras” (Open for Works) program, running since 2000, lets visitors walk through active restoration work alongside architects, archaeologists, and stonemasons, watching a 13th-century building get rebuilt in real time. The project won the Europa Nostra Special Award from the European Union in 2002 for cultural heritage conservation, and the cathedral reopened for worship in 2014, though restoration work continues.
The project’s most unusual claim to fame arrived in October 2002, when novelist Ken Follett visited the restoration while researching what would become World Without End, the sequel to The Pillars of the Earth. Follett has said the cathedral directly inspired the book, contributed financially to its restoration, and is reported to have called it one of the three most interesting cathedrals in the world. Visitors touring the site today are, in effect, walking through the same restoration process that shaped a bestselling novel about medieval cathedral building.
What Being a Green Capital Actually Changed
Vitoria-Gasteiz’s other well-known credential is more recent and less contested than its capital status. On October 21, 2010, the European Commission named Vitoria-Gasteiz the European Green Capital for 2012, only the third city to receive the title after Stockholm and Hamburg. The award recognized the city’s urban planning, green space network, recycling systems, and mobility policy, credentials that show up on the ground today in the ring of parks encircling the old town and the extensive network of green corridors connecting them.
With a population of roughly 260,700 as of 2025, Vitoria-Gasteiz is the second-largest city in the Basque Country behind Bilbao and the 17th-largest in Spain overall, a mid-sized city carrying an outsized institutional role. The Green Capital title and the political seat are two separate distinctions earned two decades apart, but together they explain why a city most Basque Country visitors never plan to see is, on paper, the most important one in the region.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Vitoria-Gasteiz the capital of the Basque Country?
Yes. The 1979 Statute of Gernika designates Vitoria-Gasteiz as the seat of the Basque Parliament and the Basque Government, and the Lehendakari’s residence, the Palacio de Ajuria Enea, is also located there. Bilbao is larger and more internationally recognized, but the region’s governing institutions are legally based in Vitoria-Gasteiz, not Bilbao.
Why isn’t Bilbao the capital of the Basque Country?
Bilbao is the Basque Country’s largest city and its economic center, but capital status was assigned by the Statute of Gernika in 1979 to Vitoria-Gasteiz, not determined by population or fame. The Basque Parliament actually held its first session in Gernika in 1980 before permanently relocating to Vitoria-Gasteiz in 1982, so even the transition took place in stages that had nothing to do with Bilbao.
What is Vitoria-Gasteiz known for?
Vitoria-Gasteiz is known for holding the seat of the Basque Government, for its almond-shaped medieval old town with streets still named for their original medieval trades, and for being named European Green Capital in 2012. Its Catedral de Santa María is also known internationally for its “Abierto por Obras” restoration-tourism program and its connection to novelist Ken Follett’s World Without End.
Is Vitoria-Gasteiz worth visiting?
Yes, particularly for travelers who want to see the institutional and historical side of Basque identity rather than only its coastal or industrial-revival image. The compact old town, the working cathedral restoration, and the city’s extensive green space network offer a different experience from Bilbao or San Sebastián, closer to a walkable medieval city than a modern tourist hub.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.