Most descriptions of the Corrales de Santo Domingo call them a starting pen and move on to the route. That undersells what they actually are. The corrals sit built directly into the batería baja, the lower gun battery, of the Baluarte de Parma, a bastion that has formed part of Pamplona’s fortified city walls since the 16th and 17th centuries. The fencing the bulls stand behind every morning of San Fermín is bolted onto a structure built to withstand cannon fire, not a piece of temporary festival infrastructure.
That distinction matters because it changes what a visitor is actually looking at on the Cuesta de Santo Domingo. A pen is disposable. A bastion is not. In June 2022, the city completed a restoration of this exact stretch of wall, a project that cost more than 900,000 euros and, in the process of rebuilding the corral fencing, uncovered forgotten remains of a city gate that had been demolished more than a century earlier. None of that is visible to someone who assumes they are looking at a plain municipal cattle pen.
This account draws on the Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s own tourism and encierro documentation, EFE wire reporting from inside the 2026 Sanfermines, and municipal press coverage of the 2022 restoration project, cross-checked against each other for the historical claims made below.
Two Corrals, Not One
Visitors often assume “where the bulls are kept” refers to a single location. It does not. The bulls that run each morning spend most of their time in Pamplona at the Corrales del Gas, a separate municipal facility in the Rochapea neighborhood, managed by the Casa de Misericordia. The name recalls the old municipal gas factory that once stood on the site before it was converted into cattle pens in the closing years of the 19th century, as ranches from outside Navarra began sending bulls to the city by rail.
The Corrales de Santo Domingo are something else entirely: a staging pen used for well under twelve hours. Each evening during the festival, the six toros bravos scheduled to run the next morning are walked from the Corrales del Gas to Santo Domingo in a procession called the encierrillo. They are held there overnight and released again at 8:00 a.m., when the first rocket opens the gate and the encierro itself begins on the Santo Domingo incline above. The bulls never live at Santo Domingo. They pass through it. For what happens on the runner’s side of that same fence in the hours before the rockets fire, see what happens in the corrales before the encierro begins.
Built Into the Walls: The Baluarte de Parma
The corral structure occupies the batería baja of the Baluarte de Parma, one of the bastions in Pamplona’s bastioned fortification system, built between the 16th and 18th centuries and considered one of the best-preserved examples of this kind of military architecture in Europe, comparable in scale to the fortifications of the Bastille in Paris. Pamplona’s walled old town and its fortifications have carried protected “Conjunto histórico-artístico” status since April 1968, with the walls themselves classified as Bien de Interés Cultural, Spain’s highest heritage designation.
For most of the 19th century the bastion’s military purpose faded as advances in artillery made it obsolete, and the city eventually demolished sections of the walls elsewhere between 1915 and 1921 to allow for urban growth. The Baluarte de Parma survived. Its lower battery, the space that now holds the corrals, is what remains of a defensive system that once made Pamplona, in the words of city restoration documentation, a genuine “plaza fuerte,” a fortress city.
A 900,000-Euro Restoration, Finished in 2022
In June 2022, Pamplona’s mayor at the time, Enrique Maya, joined the city’s Urban Planning Commission to inspect the completed restoration of the Baluarte de Parma and its lower battery, the section that carries the corrals. The project, with a budget of 904,225 euros, of which 646,375 euros, or 65 percent of the total, was funded by Spain’s Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda through its “1.5% Cultural” heritage program, rebuilt the corral fencing directly on top of the bastion. The carpentry firm Hermanos Aldaz, the same company responsible for installing and maintaining the encierro’s wooden route fencing generally, built the new structure. Architects Marta and Miguel Monreal Vidal designed the project, with construction carried out by Construcciones Leache.
The work did more than restore fencing. It uncovered the brick remains of the last stretch of a “puente durmiente,” a fixed bridge structure that once crossed the moat at the Portal de Rochapea, a city gate demolished in 1915. The find confirmed the gate’s layout mirrored that of the surviving Portal de Francia elsewhere in the walls. The restoration also cleared vegetation that had obscured the bastion’s cannon embrasures and parapets for decades, opening a new pedestrian walkway along the fortification and restoring, for the first time since the 19th century, a clear sightline along this stretch of the city’s defensive perimeter.
How the Bulls Actually Get There
The transfer itself, the encierrillo, has been a fixture of San Fermín since 1889, when it emerged alongside an older custom of gathering the bulls in riverside meadows, a practice that persisted alongside it until 1929. Its modern, standardized form dates to 1899, following a documented mishap the year before in which cattle escaped during a daytime transfer and caused disorder in the city. Since then, the transfer has taken place after dark, on foot, guided only by pastores.
Sources disagree on the exact distance the encierrillo covers. The Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s own English-language tourism page states the bulls “run the 300 metres which separate the two corrals.” Independent wire service reporting from inside the 2026 festival, along with other published accounts, puts the distance at closer to 440 meters. Both figures come from credible sources, so both are presented here rather than one being silently chosen over the other.
What is not disputed is the procedure. At the blow of a horn confirming the route is clear, pastores guide six toros bravos and their steers up the Cuesta de Santo Domingo in complete silence. Flash photography and any behavior that might startle the herd are forbidden. Public access is restricted to holders of nominative, non-transferable passes distributed by the city council in the days before the festival, which is why most visitors to San Fermín never see this part of the tradition at all.
One institutional account of the encierrillo’s unpredictability comes from Mariano Pascal of the Casa de Misericordia, speaking to the EFE wire service during the 2026 Sanfermines. According to Pascal, in 1969 a seventh bull mistakenly reached Santo Domingo, requiring an improvised predawn transfer back to the Corrales del Gas so the full herd could be sorted and moved into place again before daybreak. It is a single-sourced account, attributed here to a named institutional spokesperson rather than presented as independently confirmed fact, but it illustrates a real point: this is livestock logistics carried out at night in a medieval city center, and it does not always go according to plan.
What the Corrals Look Like Today
Today, the batería baja of the Baluarte de Parma carries new pine fencing, rebuilt in the 2022 restoration, sitting atop stonework that predates it by roughly three centuries. The clearest views of the surrounding fortification come from a slightly higher vantage point, from the corner sentry box near the Archivo Real y General de Navarra or from the paseo de ronda above the Cuesta de Santo Domingo. At ground level, the area immediately around the bastion has been cleared of vehicle traffic, opening a pedestrian walkway that lets visitors walk the base of the wall for the first time in decades. Just downhill, the same stretch of street holds a wall niche shrine that looks far older than it actually is, where runners gather each morning to ask San Fermín for protection before the run.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the Corrales de Santo Domingo?
They are the corral where the bulls running that morning’s encierro spend the night before release. They sit built into the lower battery of the Baluarte de Parma, a 16th-to-18th-century bastion in Pamplona’s city walls, at the base of the Cuesta de Santo Domingo. The bulls arrive the evening before via the encierrillo and are released at 8:00 a.m. when the first rocket fires.
Are the Corrales de Santo Domingo the same as the Corrales del Gas?
No. The Corrales del Gas, in the Rochapea neighborhood, are where the bulls are housed for most of their days in Pamplona before San Fermín. The Corrales de Santo Domingo are used only overnight, as a staging pen the animals pass through on the way to the morning’s run.
Can the public watch the encierrillo at the Corrales de Santo Domingo?
Public access is restricted. The Ayuntamiento de Pamplona distributes nominative, non-transferable passes in the days before the festival specifically so the transfer can happen in silence, without crowds or flash photography that could startle the herd.
How old is the structure the Corrales de Santo Domingo sit inside?
The Baluarte de Parma, the bastion that houses the corrals, is part of a fortification system built between the 16th and 18th centuries. A restoration completed in June 2022 rebuilt the corral fencing on top of the bastion and uncovered remains of a city gate demolished in 1915.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.