Every article about Calle San Nicolás in Pamplona repeats the same statistic: twenty one bars packed into roughly 190 meters of the Casco Viejo, an average of one bar every nine meters, more bar density than any other street local press can find in the world. What almost none of that coverage mentions is where that density is standing. Until 1423, this stretch of ground was the main street of a separate, self governing walled town with its own mayor, its own charter, its own army, and its own four gates, built specifically to keep the neighboring town on the other side of the wall out.
That detail is not trivia. It explains why the street has carried three different names in its documented history, why its patron saint’s own church was burned down with its own parishioners sheltering inside, and why the modern txikiteo crowd spilling out of Casa Otano or La Vieja Iruña on a Thursday night is standing on some of the most fought over civic ground in Navarra’s history. Understanding the street as a former town, not just a bar crawl, changes what a visitor is actually looking at.
This account draws on the documented history of the Población de San Nicolás compiled by historian J.J. Martinena and published by the Parroquia de San Nicolás, cross checked against Pamplona historian Juan Echenique’s research on the street’s name changes (via a COPE Navarra interview), and against current press coverage of the street’s modern bar count from Navarra Capital and Turium.
Before It Was a Street, It Was a Rival Town
In the closing years of the eleventh century, Pamplona underwent a wave of repoblación, or resettlement. Facing the walls of the Navarrería, the old episcopal core built on the ruins of the Roman town, two entirely new urban settlements sprang up on the open ground toward the Taconera: first the burgo of San Cernin, and shortly after, the Población de San Nicolás, originally known for a time simply as the Burgo Nuevo, the New Borough.
Each of these three communities, the Navarrería, San Cernin, and the Población de San Nicolás, was its own town in every practical sense. Each had its own fuero, or charter, its own mayor, admiral, and jurors, its own tax revenues, its own street layout, and its own fortified perimeter of walls, towers, and moats. Each had its own parish church, so its residents never had to cross into a rival town’s territory to attend Mass. San Cernin’s own namesake church, the Iglesia de San Saturnino, still stands in the Old Town today and anchored that rival borough the same way the church of San Nicolás anchored this one.
The Población de San Nicolás was built on land owned by the cathedral’s archdeacon, to whom its residents paid an annual rent. Unlike neighboring San Cernin, where Navarrese and Frankish settlers lived in separate quarters with separate parishes, San Nicolás mixed the two populations in the same streets, some working in trade, others in farming or manual crafts. Its layout followed a rectangular grid, similar to French bastide towns and to other Navarra settlements founded in the same period, such as Sangüesa and Puente la Reina.
A Weavers’ Street With Four Gates
Calle San Nicolás did not always carry that name. According to Pamplona historian Juan Echenique, the street was known as Tecenderías, after the tejedores, or weavers, who worked there, until roughly the fifteenth century. For the three centuries after that it was called Tornerías, after the torneros, the lathe turners and wood turners whose workshops lined it. Only in 1772 did the street take its current name, when the prior of what was still called Calle Tornerías replaced a decayed, barely recognizable statue of a lesser known San Superio on a house façade with one of San Nicolás instead. The change stuck.
The trade guild naming was not unique to this one street. Contemporary records of the Población describe several of its main thoroughfares by the crafts practiced along them: the Tecendería and the Torredonda, corresponding to today’s Calle San Nicolás and Calle San Gregorio.
The walled town’s defenses were formalized in 1253, when King Teobaldo I authorized construction of the Población’s own perimeter wall. Four gates controlled entry: the Puerta de las Zapaterías, later nicknamed the Puerta de la Traición, the Gate of Betrayal, at the end of what is now Calle San Antón; the Puerta de San Nicolás, beside the church that gave both the gate and eventually the street its name, near today’s Paseo de Sarasate; the Puerta de la Tripería, at the entrance to Calle Comedias; and the Puerta de la Salinería, near today’s Plaza Consistorial. The twelfth century church of San Nicolás itself doubled as one of the town’s principal defensive towers, a church fortress in the most literal sense, standing alongside towers with names like the Torre de María Delgada and the Torres Redondas. Much of this defensive ring survived until the late sixteenth century, when King Felipe II authorized its demolition so the stone could be reused in the new Ciudadela and the city’s outer walls.
The Church That Was Burned With Its Own People Inside
Relations between Pamplona’s three medieval towns were not neighborly. The documented record includes repeated episodes of violence, looting, and killing between them. San Nicolás, which was barred from building in stone toward San Cernin’s side of the boundary, suffered one of the worst attacks in 1222, when residents of neighboring San Cernin burned the Población’s own parish church, with many San Nicolás parishioners sheltering inside at the time.
That was not the last or even the bloodiest chapter. In 1276, the long simmering rivalry erupted into the Guerra de la Navarrería, the deadliest of the burgo conflicts. The Navarrería itself was largely destroyed in the fighting. In its aftermath, San Cernin and the Población de San Nicolás, former rivals now facing a common enemy, agreed to unite into a single municipality, an alliance that held for well over a century afterward.
The final, formal end to the three way division came in 1423, when King Carlos III el Noble granted the Privilegio de la Unión, merging the Navarrería, San Cernin, and the Población de San Nicolás into one city and one municipal government, a founding moment covered in full in San Fermín’s medieval roots. Even so, the memory of the old split did not disappear overnight. The representation formula Carlos III established for Pamplona’s city council, five councilors for the old Burgo of San Cernin, three for the Población de San Nicolás, and two for the Navarrería, remained in formal use until 1836, more than four centuries after the union itself. The old Puerta de la Salinería, one of the Población’s four gates, stood near what is today the Plaza Consistorial, the square that now marks the civic center of the single, unified Pamplona those three rival towns eventually became.
From Guild Street to the World’s Busiest Bar Crawl
None of that civic history is visible to someone standing on Calle San Nicolás today with a kalimotxo in hand. What they will notice instead is the crowd. Navarra Capital and Turium, reporting independently and more than a year apart, both put the street at twenty one bars across roughly 190 meters, an average of one bar door every 9.04 meters, a density both outlets describe as the highest of any street in the world, based on press reporting rather than any formal certification. Casa Otano, one of the street’s oldest continuously operating bars, has been serving from the same stretch of pavement since 1912, nearly a century and a half after the street took the name it still carries.
The transformation from a walled town’s working class weavers’ row into the anchor of Pamplona’s txikiteo culture happened gradually, without a single defining moment the way the 1423 union or the 1772 renaming did. But the density of activity today, the shoulder to shoulder crowds moving from one doorway to the next during the hora del vermut, is arguably the closest modern equivalent to the packed, mixed, trade filled streets the Población de San Nicolás was built around nine centuries ago.
What Visitors Should Know
Calle San Nicolás sits inside Pamplona’s Casco Viejo, a short walk from the Plaza del Castillo, and its bars are busiest at midday and in the early evening, particularly around the hora del vermut and on Thursdays. Nothing about the street’s medieval defensive walls, gates, or towers survives above ground today. The evidence of that history lives in archives and in the parish’s own records, not in visible ruins, so a visitor looking for the four vanished gates or the church fortress walls will not find physical markers on the street itself.
FAQ
Why is Calle San Nicolás called Calle San Nicolás?
The street took its current name in 1772, when the prior of what was then called Calle Tornerías replaced a deteriorated statue of a little known San Superio on a house façade with a statue of San Nicolás. Before that, the street had been called Tecenderías, after its weavers, until roughly the fifteenth century, then Tornerías, after its lathe turners, for the three centuries that followed.
How many bars are on Calle San Nicolás in Pamplona?
Press reporting from Navarra Capital and Turium both count twenty one bars across roughly 190 meters of the street, an average of one bar approximately every nine meters. This figure comes from independent journalism, not a formal world record certification.
Was Calle San Nicolás always part of the city of Pamplona?
No. Until 1423, it was the main street of the Población de San Nicolás, a separate, self governing walled town with its own charter, mayor, and defenses. King Carlos III el Noble merged it with the neighboring towns of San Cernin and the Navarrería into a single Pamplona that year, though the city council kept separate representation quotas for the old three towns until 1836.
What is the oldest bar on Calle San Nicolás?
Casa Otano, founded in 1912, is documented as one of the street’s oldest continuously operating bars, though the street itself has been a commercial thoroughfare since the medieval Población de San Nicolás was first built in the late eleventh century.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.