Every account of Café Iruña in Pamplona repeats the same three facts: opened in 1888, Hemingway’s favorite table, a bronze statue waiting at the bar. What almost none of them mention is that the Belle Époque room visitors photograph today is not the same room, uninterrupted, since 1888. From 1977 to 1998, the building on Plaza del Castillo operated as a bingo hall. The mirrors, the marble tables, the ornate ceiling: what stands today is a restoration, completed in 1998, not an unbroken original.
That gap matters because it changes what “historic” actually means at this address. Travel writers describe Café Iruña as if it simply continued, generation after generation, exactly as Hemingway saw it in the 1920s. It didn’t. For a full generation of pamplonicas, this was not a café at all. Understanding the twenty one year interruption, and why it happened in 1977 specifically, explains more about the building’s real history than another retelling of the Hemingway statue ever could.
This account draws on the Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s own tourism archive, the architectural history documented in Spanish Wikipedia’s citations to an academic study of architect Maximiano Hijón, Spain’s national legal gazette recording the 1977 law that legalized bingo gaming, and the detailed local record kept by Pamplona historian Carlos Albillo Torres at Memorias del Viejo Pamplona, who attended the café’s 1998 reopening in person.
The Founding: 800 Shareholders and Mirrors That Arrived Late
Café Iruña was supposed to open on June 27, 1888. It didn’t, because the ornamental mirrors ordered from a firm called La Veneciana, at a cost of roughly 10,000 pesetas, hadn’t arrived. The café finally opened its doors the evening before the 1888 San Fermín festival, on July 2, and according to the chronicles of the time, the arcades outside were packed with people waiting to see it.
The company behind it, Iruña S.A., had been legally incorporated four months earlier, on March 22, 1888, before the notary Don Polonio Escolá. The plan called for 125,000 pesetas in capital. Demand ran so far past that figure, up to 800 local residents applied for shares, that the founders had to double it. The company’s own founding bylaws stated the intention plainly in Article 3: shareholders were meant to become the café’s first and most loyal customers. Iruña S.A. beat out two competing bids for the site, from the operators of Café La Marina and from Kutz, a café brand not yet established in Pamplona at the time.
The building itself, owned by the Crédito Navarro bank, was the first in Pamplona to use iron in its structural floor framing. It was also the first public establishment in the city with electric lighting, installed by Salvador Pinaquy and his partner Salvatierra using carbon filament bulbs shipped in from Hamburg, and the first with a public telephone. Two of the original 1888 German exterior lamps reportedly still hang on the building today.
Two Architects, Fifty Years Apart
The building’s first design came from Maximiano Hijón, an architect born in La Rioja who built it for the Crédito Navarro bank in 1888. Nearly half a century later, between 1932 and 1934, Navarrese architect Víctor Eusa carried out a substantial renovation of the same building. Eusa, sometimes called the architect of Pamplona for the sheer volume of his work across the city, also renovated the Gran Hotel La Perla in 1932 and designed the Parque de la Media Luna and the gardens of La Taconera later that decade.
There is a genuine, documented point of confusion tied to this history. Two nearly identical buildings marked with the Crédito Navarro name stand on Plaza del Castillo: the original 1888 building on the north side, and a second one built in the 1930s on the south side when the Teatro Gayarre was relocated to make room for Avenida Carlos III. Locals still argue over which set of initials on which facade belongs to which institution. The café itself occupies only the ground floor of the original, northern building; the first floor above it houses the Nuevo Casino Principal de Pamplona, a separate historic institution entirely.
Twenty-One Years as a Bingo Hall
In 1977, Spain’s government issued Real Decreto 444/1977, followed by an order that June formalizing the country’s first legal framework for bingo gaming. That same year, Café Iruña closed as a café and reopened as a bingo hall. It stayed that way for two decades.
The Belle Époque room that draws visitors today, with its crystal chandeliers, mirrors, and ornate ceiling, was not preserved through that period as a working café. It was restored in 1998, when the business reverted to its original use under then Pamplona mayor Javier Chourraut, who presided over the reopening. Carlos Albillo Torres, the Pamplona historian who has documented the building’s history in detail, attended that 1998 reopening himself and described it as a recovery of the café’s “apariencia original,” its original appearance, rather than a continuation of an unbroken one.
The 1990s also brought a wave of expansion for the Iruña company beyond the main room. In 1991, the basement was renovated into a separate bar called Subsuelo. A year later, the company opened a self service restaurant in the Mendebaldea district, a bocatería called Ondo, and the space now known as the Rincón de Hemingway.
Hemingway’s Corner Came Later Than People Assume
The themed corner honoring Hemingway, with period photographs and a dedicated space at the bar, dates to that same early 1990s expansion, not to the writer’s own lifetime. The life size bronze statue that now stands there, showing Hemingway leaning against the bar, measures 1.85 meters and weighs 240 kilograms. It is the work of sculptor José Javier Doncel and has stood in place only since 2007, nearly three decades after the writer’s death.
The building’s actual relationship to Hemingway is also narrower than the tourist narrative suggests. According to Albillo Torres’s account, Café Iruña was never the bohemian café where painters and writers gathered daily, the way Café Roch, a few streets away, was known to be. It was instead the place where commercial agreements were struck, where political meetings were held, and where tertulias taurinas, informal bullfighting discussion circles, met for decades. Traveling salesmen and merchants closing deals filled its tables far more often than novelists did. Hemingway’s presence, real and well documented in the true story behind The Sun Also Rises’ arrival in Pamplona, still sits inside that broader identity as a meeting place for Pamplona’s business and civic life, not apart from it.
What the Café Actually Ran, Day to Day
Beneath the main hall, Café Iruña kept a wine cellar for aging its own stock and a set of billiard tables, two at first, later expanded to four, then cut back by half again after 1912. Its coñac “del 88” and its “ron del Bisabuelo” were well known in its early decades. Starting in 1911, the café even bottled its own gaseosas in the basement at a rate of 500 bottles an hour, and it ran a home delivery service for customers who wanted their chocolate without leaving the house, sourced evenly among three Pamplona chocolatiers of the era: Manterola, Mayo, and Seminario. In the 1950s, it was among the first hostelry businesses in the city to install a proper bar counter, an element that was still unusual in Pamplona at the time.
What to Know Before You Visit
Café Iruña sits at Plaza del Castillo, 44, on the square’s north side, and remains a working café and restaurant today. Full practical details, including hours and the café’s own account of the Hemingway connection, are maintained by the Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s tourism office. The Rincón de Hemingway is open to the public during normal service hours, and the 1998 restoration means the room now closely resembles the one described in Hemingway’s own writing, wicker chairs, arcade views, and all, even though the physical decor visitors see was largely rebuilt rather than merely maintained. If coffee is on your order, it helps to know how a cortado differs from the coffee most visitors expect before you sit down under those chandeliers.
FAQ
When was Café Iruña built?
Café Iruña was legally incorporated as the company Iruña S.A. on March 22, 1888, and opened to the public on July 2, 1888, the evening before that year’s San Fermín festival. The building itself was designed by architect Maximiano Hijón for the Crédito Navarro bank. Nearly 800 local residents applied for shares in the original company, far more than the founders expected, and the planned capital had to be doubled to meet demand.
Was Café Iruña always a café?
No. From 1977 to 1998, the space operated as a bingo hall rather than a café. It was restored to its original café use in 1998, the same year Pamplona’s then mayor Javier Chourraut presided over its reopening. The conversion to a bingo hall happened the same year Spain’s government first legalized bingo gaming nationally, in 1977.
Is the Café Iruña interior original?
Only partially. The building’s structure dates to 1888, with a major renovation carried out by architect Víctor Eusa between 1932 and 1934. The Belle Époque decor visitors see today, the mirrors, marble tables, and ornate ceiling, was restored in 1998 after the 21 year bingo hall period, so it reflects the historical style rather than an uninterrupted original surface. Locals who remember the bingo years describe the 1998 reopening as a genuine recovery project, not routine upkeep.
When was the Hemingway statue at Café Iruña installed?
The bronze statue of Hemingway, by sculptor José Javier Doncel, is life size, measures 1.85 meters, and has stood in the Rincón de Hemingway since 2007. The themed corner itself dates to the early 1990s, part of the same wave of expansion that also added the Subsuelo bar and a restaurant in Mendebaldea. Both postdate Hemingway’s own death in 1961 by decades, meaning the writer never saw the corner named in his honor.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.