When people talk about the Ensanche in Pamplona, they usually mean one thing: the modern grid of streets south of the medieval Casco Antiguo, built once the city’s old walls came down. That description hides the actual history. Pamplona did not build one new town after its walls fell. It built two, more than three decades apart, designed by two different municipal architects under two different plans, and the first attempt at the second one was rejected outright before a single block went up.
The distinction matters because the two districts do not share a scale, a design logic, or even the same relationship to the old town. The First Ensanche, largely finished by 1900, is a handful of blocks wedged between the Citadel and the Palacio de Navarra. The Second Ensanche, whose first stone was not laid until 1920, covers 96 blocks across nearly 90 hectares, and it is the district most visitors actually picture when they think of Pamplona’s wide 20th century avenues and its Avenida de Carlos III. Collapsing the two into one story erases the part of Pamplona’s history that explains why the newer district looks and feels the way it does today.
This account draws on the Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s own published history of its walls, a centenary notice published by the Gobierno de Navarra’s Archivo Real y General de Navarra, and the academic record behind Pamplona’s urban history, including Esther Elizalde’s Ayuntamiento-commissioned study “Pamplona plaza fuerte, 1808-1973” and Juan José Martinena’s history of the Citadel, cross-checked against independent local research citing the period’s own municipal records and royal orders.
Why Pamplona Waited Until 1915 to Tear Down Its Own Walls
Pamplona spent centuries as a plaza fuerte, an active fortress city guarding the approach from France. That status came with a legal consequence: construction was restricted not just inside the walls but in the “zonas polémicas” around them, land the army considered too militarily sensitive to build on. The Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s own history of its fortifications describes a city that stayed legally sealed inside its 16th century defenses well into the 20th century, long after those defenses had stopped making practical sense.
The cost of that restriction was overcrowding. By the end of the 19th century, roughly 28,197 people were packed inside the walled city, and contemporary doctors were already documenting the result. One frequently cited five-story building housed 123 people, 59 of them small children. Population figures barely moved for the next two decades, 28,886 residents in 1901 and 29,472 in 1910, not because Pamplona had stopped growing but because it had nowhere left to put anyone.
What finally broke the deadlock was not local politics. It was the First World War. The Ayuntamiento’s own account is explicit: the artillery and aerial bombing that defined the war made clear to the Spanish military that a bastioned 16th century fortress no longer functioned as real defense. That argument, not a change of heart in Pamplona itself, is what won the concession to demolish the city’s southern wall. Mayor Alfonso Gaztelu marked the occasion in July 1915, telling residents that the wall’s fall was an event “que tanto habéis deseado,” that they had wanted for a long time. Actual clearance work ran from 1918 to 1921, and the Spanish crown did not formally authorize expropriating the freed land until a royal order in May 1920.
The First Ensanche: Pamplona’s False Start
The First Ensanche, sometimes called the Ensanche Viejo, came decades earlier and on a far smaller scale. In August 1888, a Royal Order approved demolishing two of the Citadel’s own bastions, La Victoria and San Antón, the fortifications that had been watching over the city from the inside. Municipal architect Julián Arteaga designed the resulting civil district, while a separate military zone, built on land ceded back to the army, was laid out by Antonio Los Arcos.
What Arteaga actually built was modest: about six blocks squeezed into the space between the Citadel, the Taconera gardens, and the Palacio de Navarra. Some sources place the finished demolition of the two bastions as late as 1891, three years after the original authorization, since clearing fortifications of that scale did not happen overnight. The First Ensanche’s most visible legacy today is the Palacio de Justicia, now the Parlamento de Navarra, fronting the Paseo de Sarasate.
It solved almost nothing. Building lots sold at prices only the wealthiest pamploneses could afford, and the city’s core overcrowding problem, the one that had justified tearing down the bastions in the first place, was untouched. Pamplona would need a second, much larger expansion, and it would take another three decades of negotiation with the army to get it.
A Rejected Plan, and the Architect Who Fixed It
Before Pamplona got the Second Ensanche it actually built, it got a version it rejected. In 1909, the Ayuntamiento asked Julián Arteaga, the same architect behind the First Ensanche, to design the new district. His plan laid out a fairly regular grid organized around the old road to France, today’s Avenida de Baja Navarra. But it kept the Plaza del Castillo sealed off from the new district and left the city’s existing bullring exactly where it stood. The new grid never properly connected to the medieval Casco Antiguo, and the Ayuntamiento turned it down.
After Arteaga retired, the new municipal architect, Serapio Esparza, presented his own design in 1916. Esparza modeled his plan directly on Ildefonso Cerdà’s 1860 expansion of Barcelona, one of the most influential grid plans in 19th century Europe. Rather than treating the new district as separate from the old town, Esparza oriented his streets in the same direction as the Casco Antiguo’s own medieval grid, maximizing natural light while tying the new neighborhood back to the old one. His plan opened the Plaza del Castillo directly toward the new district instead of sealing it shut, the fix that had doomed Arteaga’s version.
What Building Avenida de Carlos III Actually Required
Esparza’s Second Ensanche was not a modest addition. It laid out 96 city blocks across roughly 890,000 square meters, more than two-thirds of it obtained through forced expropriation. The standard block measured 70 by 70 meters, built around a closed interior courtyard with corners cut at an angle, a clear if less dramatic echo of the chamfered blocks that define Cerdà’s Barcelona.
Cutting the new Avenida de Carlos III through the city meant tearing down buildings that had stood for generations. The old municipal theater came down to make way for the avenue and reopened in its present location in 1931 under a new name, honoring the recently deceased Roncal-born tenor Julián Gayarre. The city’s old bullring, standing in roughly the same spot, also had to go to clear the route; the building itself burned down in August 1921, in a fire some contemporary chronicles suspected, though never proved, was set deliberately to end the argument over where to put a replacement. Part of the Basílica de San Ignacio was cut into as well to make the new avenue’s line work.
The first stone of the Second Ensanche was laid on 29 November 1920, the feast day of San Saturnino, patron saint of the city, at the Bajada del Labrit. Original street widths were fixed at 15, 20, 25, and 30 meters, with buildings capped around five stories to preserve light and ventilation, a rule later relaxed to allow ten-story buildings further south. Construction stretched across four decades; the final blocks near the Plaza de la Libertad were not finished until 1960.
Two Districts, One Walk
Both Ensanches are still walkable as two distinct experiences rather than one continuous new town. The First Ensanche reads as a small, dense pocket between the Citadel and the Taconera, its scale closer to the old town than to what came after it. The Second Ensanche, organized around the wide, tree-lined Avenida de Carlos III and the diagonal sweep of Avenida de Baja Navarra, is the Pamplona most visitors actually experience once they step outside the Casco Antiguo: broader streets, taller buildings, and a grid deliberately built to still feel connected to the medieval city it replaced.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Ensanche in Pamplona?
The Ensanche is Pamplona’s planned expansion beyond its old medieval walls. It is not one project but two: the First Ensanche, a small district built starting in 1888 next to the Citadel, and the much larger Second Ensanche, built starting in 1920 on the land freed by the demolition of the city’s southern wall.
How many Ensanches does Pamplona have?
Pamplona has two, commonly called the First Ensanche and the Second Ensanche. They were built more than three decades apart, designed by different municipal architects, and differ enormously in scale, with the second covering 96 city blocks against the first’s roughly six.
When were Pamplona’s city walls demolished?
The city’s southern wall began coming down in 1915, following decades of negotiation with the Spanish military, which had classified Pamplona as an active fortress city. Physical clearance work ran mainly from 1918 to 1921, and the land itself was not formally expropriated until a royal order in 1920.
Why is Avenida de Carlos III in Pamplona so wide?
Avenida de Carlos III was the central axis of Serapio Esparza’s 1916 plan for the Second Ensanche, modeled on Ildefonso Cerdà’s grid design for Barcelona. Building it required demolishing the city’s old municipal theater, its old bullring, and part of the Basílica de San Ignacio to cut a wide, direct route linking the new district back to the Plaza del Castillo.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.