Every account of the Plaza de Toros in Pamplona repeats the same three facts and stops there: built in 1922, expanded in 1966, holds about 19,720 people. What that summary leaves out is who actually built the version standing today. The 1966 expansion that gave the arena its current size and shape was designed by a young Rafael Moneo, working with engineer Carlos Fernández Casado. Three decades later, Moneo became the only Spanish architect ever to win the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honor. The building where the encierro ends is one of his earliest completed works.
That detail matters for more than trivia. Visitors treat the bullring as a finish line and nothing else, a wall that stops the bulls. But the building has its own history, separate from any single morning of the festival, and understanding it changes how the last minutes of the run read. The plaza de toros is not simply where the encierro happens to end. It is a specific, designed piece of architecture that the route was built to reach, and its current form is younger and more considered than most visitors assume.
This account draws on the Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s own historical and Encierro pages, the Pritzker Architecture Prize’s official biography of Rafael Moneo, and academic architecture publications covering the 1966 to 1967 expansion, including a paper indexed in Dialnet and coverage in the professional journal Revista Arquitectura.
A Second Bullring, Not the First
The current arena is not the first building in Pamplona to host the run’s finish. According to the Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s own account, the word encierro itself was first used in 1856, when Calle Estafeta became part of the route and a new bullring near the Gayarre Theater opened to replace the earlier practice of ending the run at the Plaza del Castillo, then called the “entrada.” That 1856 arena, not the one standing today, is where the run got its name.
The bullring visitors see now dates to 1922. It was designed by architect Francisco Urcola of San Sebastián and inaugurated on July 7 of that year, replacing the aging 19th century structure. It originally seated roughly 13,000 spectators, built in a historicist style with Renaissance-influenced detailing and, notably for the period, reinforced concrete construction rather than the timber and masonry typical of older Spanish bullrings. The circular arena floor measures roughly 50 meters across. The building sits on Paseo Hemingway, at the point where the encierro route, after narrowing past the former Telefónica building and through the callejón, finally opens into the ring.
Understanding this two-stage history corrects a common assumption: that “the Plaza de Toros” is a single unchanging landmark that has always stood exactly where it stands now. It is closer to a site with a continuous function and a discontinuous building history. The name has attached to at least three different structures since the mid 19th century: the Plaza del Castillo arrangement that predates 1856, the arena near the Gayarre Theater that gave the run its name, and the 1922 building, later enlarged, that stands today. Each version served the same nine days a year. None of them are the same building.
The 1966 Expansion, and Moneo’s First Major Commission
By the mid 1960s, San Fermín’s growing crowds had outgrown the 1922 arena. In November 1965, the Casa de Misericordia de Pamplona, which owned the bullring, opened a national design competition for its expansion. A young Rafael Moneo, working with engineer Carlos Fernández Casado, won the competition in 1966. The pair’s solution avoided demolishing the existing 1922 structure. Instead, it added a new upper tier built over the original building, a technically demanding approach that preserved Urcola’s original arena while raising its seating capacity by roughly fifty percent. Construction ran from November 1966 to June 1967, and the expanded arena was inaugurated on July 7, 1967, with capacity raised to approximately 19,720, the figure still cited today.
The project sits among Moneo’s earliest completed works. His officially credited first commission was the Diestre Factory in Zaragoza, commissioned in 1965, but the Pamplona bullring expansion was won in national competition and built in the same period, making it one of the first public projects to carry his design into the world. Three decades later, in 1996, the Pritzker Architecture Prize named Moneo its laureate, the first Spanish architect to receive the honor. The jury’s citation described him as an architect “with tremendous range, each of whose buildings is unique.” The plaza de toros in Pamplona is one of the buildings that range started with.
Hemingway’s Bullring, Before the Fame
Ernest Hemingway’s connection to the arena predates his novels, and the record of exactly how involved he was runs deeper than the popular version of the story. In a Toronto Star Weekly article dated October 27, 1923, he described his first morning at the ring during his first San Fermín: following a crowd through a narrow gate in the walls toward “a yellowish, flat and empty field, where the new and white bull ring stands,” already packed before the bulls arrived. The following year, Hemingway took part in the amateur vaquillas, the padded-horn young heifers released into the ring one by one after the morning run, an event where visitors and locals alike enter the sand to test their nerve. In a letter dated July 19, 1924, sent from Burguete, he described the experience directly: he appeared in the ring five times, was knocked down repeatedly, and came away bruised.
The bullring later appears across his published work, including “The Sun Also Rises,” “Death in the Afternoon,” and “The Dangerous Summer,” where he described it as “high and white and concrete-looking in the sun.” That description belongs to the 1922 Urcola building, decades before Moneo’s expansion changed its profile, which is worth remembering when comparing Hemingway’s Pamplona to the one visitors see today.
Two monuments near the arena entrance mark the connection now. A monument to Hemingway by sculptor Luis Sanguino, dedicated in 1968, stands beside the lane leading into the ring. A separate bronze Monument to the Running of the Bulls by sculptor Rafael Huerta stands near the main gate, freezing a single instant of the run in metal. Neither monument existed when Hemingway wrote about the arena. Both were added after his death, a reminder that much of what visitors now associate with “Hemingway’s Pamplona” was built to commemorate him, not by him.
The Building’s Role in the Encierro Itself
Architecturally, the arena is where the encierro stops being a street event and becomes a stadium event. The 848.6-meter route from the Corrales de Santo Domingo narrows past the Telefónica building, the run’s final funnel before the callejón, through the corridor connecting Calle Estafeta to the ring, before opening into the arena floor. It is one of the run’s most consequential stretches: tired or separated bulls can lose the herd here, and the funnel shape of the callejón regularly produces pile-ups among runners in the final seconds before the ring opens up. That bottleneck exists because of the building’s own geometry. Urcola’s 1922 design, and Moneo and Fernández Casado’s 1966 to 1967 tier built above it, both had to resolve the same problem: how to take a wide street of running bulls and runners and pour it safely through a single gate into a circular sand floor.
Once inside, runners are directed behind the interior fence to clear space for the bulls and the herders (pastores) guiding them toward the corrals, and a final rocket confirms all the bulls are secured, the fourth of the four cohetes that mark the run’s stages from start to finish. Watching those last moments from inside the arena is its own distinct experience, separate from watching along the street fence or from a rented balcony, and requires its own ticketed entry, purchased directly at the ring from early morning on run days.
FAQ
Who designed Pamplona’s bullring?
The current arena was designed by architect Francisco Urcola and opened in 1922. Its major expansion, completed in 1966 to 1967 and responsible for the ring’s current capacity of roughly 19,720, was designed by Rafael Moneo, working with engineer Carlos Fernández Casado. Moneo went on to win the 1996 Pritzker Architecture Prize, architecture’s highest honor. He returned to Pamplona three more times over his career to design the Plaza de los Fueros, the Archivo Real y General de Navarra, and the Museo Universidad de Navarra, all covered here.
How big is the Plaza de Toros in Pamplona?
The arena holds approximately 19,720 spectators, a capacity reached in the 1966 to 1967 expansion. It originally seated around 13,000 when it opened in 1922.
Is the Pamplona bullring the same building the encierro has always ended at?
No. The word “encierro” was first used in 1856 for a run ending at an earlier bullring near the Gayarre Theater. The current arena, on Paseo Hemingway, dates to 1922 and was substantially expanded in 1966 to 1967.
Can you watch the encierro from inside the bullring?
Yes. Spectators can watch the run’s final stretch and the bulls’ arrival from inside the arena through ticketed entry, separate from watching along the street fencing. It is one of three main ways to view the run, alongside the fence line and rented balconies along the route.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.