Every travel guide describes the Paseo Sarasate the same way: a wide, tree lined promenade, a monument, six stone statues on the central platform, a nice place to walk between the old town and Plaza del Castillo. Visit this July and half of that description is already wrong. The six statues are gone. They were dismantled in January 2026 and moved across the city to Parque de la Taconera, part of an 18 month, roughly 15 million euro reconstruction that will not finish until sometime in early 2027.
That gap between what guidebooks say and what is standing on the ground right now matters for anyone walking through Pamplona this San Fermín. The paseo has been rebuilt, renamed, and reshaped before, and each version left something behind for the next one to build on top of. Understanding what the boulevard actually is, underneath the construction fencing, means understanding all of it: the medieval ditch it was built over, the fiscal protest it was built to commemorate, the statues it has quietly lost twice now, and the granite platform currently going in to replace them.
What follows draws on the Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s own project announcements and construction updates, the institutional history of the Parlamento de Navarra building, and Spanish language historical documentation of the Monumento a los Fueros and the paseo’s own layered past, cross checked against independent Navarra press coverage of the ongoing works.
Built on a filled in moat
Long before it was a promenade, the ground under the Paseo Sarasate was outside the city. During the Middle Ages, Pamplona’s wall ran along the paseo’s northern side, the line closest to today’s old town, with the fortified Iglesia de San Nicolás built directly into that wall. Everything now on the paseo’s south side sat beyond the fortifications, in open country belonging to what is today Parque de la Taconera.
That changed in the 16th century. After the Castilian Aragonese conquest of Navarra, Pamplona built the modern walls that still ring parts of the city today, and the old moat ground was absorbed inside them, becoming a wooded recreation space attached to the Taconera. It stayed that way, informal and untamed, until the 19th century, when the city planted it out and formalized it into an actual promenade. Trees went in around 1885. A tram station for the Irati line arrived in 1911, and locals at the time described the change in blunt terms: the paseo had gone from a near desert to the city’s living room, busy enough to rival Plaza del Castillo itself.
The boulevard’s naming history, including why the city renamed it for a Pamplona born violin virtuoso while he was still alive, and why plenty of locals still call it by an older name, is its own story, already told in full in our profile of Pablo Sarasate. This piece picks up where that one leaves off: not who the paseo is named for, but what has actually stood on it, and what is happening to it right now.
A monument to a tax revolt, and a parliament in a former courthouse
The paseo’s western end is closed off by a building that has changed jobs once already. Built between 1892 and 1897 in red brick and sandstone, it opened as the Palacio de Justicia, home to Navarra’s Audiencia Provincial, and it was, at the time, the only government civil building raised in the city’s First Ensanche. It served as a courthouse until 1996. After a six year renovation that preserved the original facade and perimeter structure, it reopened in 2002 as the seat of the Parlamento de Navarra, a conversion carried out by architects Juan Miguel Otxotorena, Mariano González Presencio, Javier Pérez Herreras, and José Vicente Valdenebro.
Facing the Parliament from the paseo’s other end sits the Palacio de Navarra, the 19th century neoclassical seat of the Gobierno de Navarra. Between the two, roughly at the paseo’s center, stands the Monumento a los Fueros, dedicated in 1903 and, technically, never formally inaugurated. The monument was built by public subscription at a cost of 200,000 pesetas after the Gamazada, the 1893 and 1894 popular uprising against Spanish finance minister Germán Gamazo’s attempt to override Navarra’s historic fiscal exemptions, the fueros. More than 120,000 signatures were gathered against the measure in a region with a population of only around 300,000 at the time. Architect Manuel Martínez de Ubago designed the monument with his brother José, a sculptor, who cast the bronze figure crowning it: a five meter matron representing Navarra, holding a broken chain in one hand and the Foral Law in the other.
At the paseo’s Plaza del Castillo corner stands a fourth building worth knowing: a palatial house built around 1840 for banker and ganadero Nazario Carriquiri, later sold to the Baleztena family, whose name it still carries. Its main door opens onto the paseo itself even though its facades also front Plaza del Castillo and Calle Comedias, and its balconies have looked out over more than one century of the city’s civic life.
The six kings who are not there right now
Until January 2026, the paseo’s central platform was lined with six white stone statues, each nominally representing a king. Their own history is stranger than most visitors realize. The figures were carved between 1750 and 1753 for a decorative program planned for Madrid’s Palacio Real, the royal palace, and rejected before installation. Pamplona’s city council acquired them in the 19th century for its own new promenade. In 1972, two of the six, originally depicting King Fernando VI and his wife Bárbara de Braganza, were returned to Madrid in exchange for two new figures representing actual Navarrese monarchs, Felipe III de Navarra and García Ramírez. Those two are the only statues among the six whose identity is inscribed on their pedestal. The other four have stood on the paseo for well over a century with nobody certain exactly which historical kings they were meant to portray.
None of the six are standing there now. As the first phase of the current reconstruction project, all six statues and their pedestals were dismantled in January 2026, with the help of the Príncipe de Viana cultural institution, and relocated to Parque de la Taconera, into a landscaped area near the park’s eastern overlook. Whether or when they return to the paseo has not been announced. What is confirmed is what will eventually take their place at the paseo’s two ends: a new, human scale statue of Pablo Sarasate on a granite bench built around a tree near the Palacio de Navarra, and an installation of sculptor Jorge Oteiza’s 1952 work “Monumento al prisionero político desconocido,” originally submitted to an international competition held by London’s Institute of Contemporary Art, positioned at the Parliament end as a kind of gateway.
A 15 million euro rebuild, mid construction through San Fermín
The reconstruction underway now goes by the name Isolíneas, the winning proposal from a design competition, submitted by the team Vi17 Arquitectura together with OAB, Office of Architecture in Barcelona, and the landscape firm OKRA. The plan replaces the paseo’s current layout with a single continuous granite platform, using diagonal paving lines set 25 meters apart to connect the north and south sidewalks without the stepped curbs that currently separate them.
Work formally began with a signed Acta de Comienzo de Obra on December 15, 2025, and heavy machinery entered the site on January 7, 2026. The full contract, awarded to the joint venture of Construcciones Mariezcurrena and Guillén Obras y Proyectos, totals just over 15 million euros, with roughly 10.8 million euros covering the paseo’s reurbanización itself and the remainder split between renewing more than a century old water and sewer networks and extending the city’s pneumatic waste collection system into the area. The Gobierno de Navarra contributed 1.71 million euros toward the project through its regional investment plan. The contract runs 18 months, with a three year warranty afterward, and the city’s own target completion is before San Fermín 2027.
As of this San Fermín, the project has completed roughly its first third, worth just under 2.1 million euros, concentrated on underground work: replacing aging water and sewer lines and laying groundwork for the pneumatic waste system, all under continuous archaeological monitoring given how much of the city’s history sits beneath this ground. Of the paseo’s 77 trees, the plan is to keep 74 in their existing spots, with only three marked for a careful winter transplant elsewhere on site. For the fiestas themselves, the Ayuntamiento has paused the main works and laid provisional paving so the paseo can reopen almost in full. The one exception is the central platform and the southern lane between the Parliament and Calle Vínculo, which stay closed through the festival. Once San Fermín ends, crews resume the network renewal and permanent paving, working from the Parliament end back toward the Palacio de Navarra.
Frequently asked questions
Why is the Paseo Sarasate under construction?
The city of Pamplona is carrying out an 18 month, roughly 15 million euro reconstruction of the paseo called Isolíneas, which replaces the current layout with a single granite platform, renews water and sewer networks more than a century old, and extends the pneumatic waste collection system. Work began in December 2025 and the city’s target is completion before San Fermín 2027.
Is the Paseo Sarasate open during San Fermín 2026?
Yes, almost entirely. The Ayuntamiento paused the main construction and laid provisional paving so the paseo can reopen for the fiestas, with only the central platform and the southern lane between the Parliament of Navarra and Calle Vínculo remaining closed. Full network renewal and permanent paving resume once the festival ends.
Where are the six king statues from the Paseo Sarasate now?
They were dismantled in January 2026, with the assistance of the Príncipe de Viana institution, and relocated to Parque de la Taconera, in a landscaped area near the park’s eastern overlook. The city has not announced whether or when they will return to the paseo. Only two of the six, depicting the Navarrese kings Felipe III de Navarra and García Ramírez since a 1972 swap, have a confirmed identity inscribed on their pedestal.
What buildings are on the Paseo Sarasate?
The paseo runs between the Palacio de Navarra, the 19th century neoclassical seat of Navarra’s regional government, and the Parlamento de Navarra, a former 1892 to 1897 courthouse converted into the parliament’s home in 2002. At its center stands the 1903 Monumento a los Fueros, commemorating the 1893 to 1894 Gamazada protest, and at its Plaza del Castillo corner stands Casa Baleztena, a palatial house built around 1840.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.