Every English-language explainer on Basque gastronomic societies, the private cooking and dining clubs known as txokos, tells the same story: nineteenth-century San Sebastián, friends tired of paying bar prices for small glasses of wine, a clubhouse called Unión Artesana still running since 1870. Not one of them mentions Pamplona. Pamplona has run its own network of these societies since 1953, and one of the oldest is currently locked in a public dispute with the Navarra regional government over who is allowed to join.
That gap matters because Pamplona’s txoko scene isn’t a footnote to San Sebastián’s. It is a separate, self-contained civic institution with its own founding story, its own buildings, and its own unresolved argument about membership playing out in the Navarra press as recently as this spring. It also gets confused, even by some visitors who’ve done their homework on San Fermín, with the city’s peñas, which are a related but genuinely different kind of club.
What follows draws on the City of Pamplona’s own registry of civic entities, the surviving internal history published by Pamplona’s oldest gastronomic society, and Navarra newspaper reporting on the membership dispute through April 2026.
What a Txoko Actually Is
Txoko is Basque for “corner” or “small, cozy place.” In Spanish the same kind of club is usually called a sociedad gastronómica, a gastronomic society. The two terms describe the same institution: a private space, typically rented or owned collectively, where a fixed group of members cook, eat, and socialize together, doing their own shopping and their own cooking rather than being served by staff.
The institution traces to San Sebastián in the second half of the nineteenth century. A group of friends known as txikiteros, regulars who met to drink small glasses of wine called txikitos, grew tired of paying bar prices for the privilege and pooled their own money to rent a space instead, stock it themselves, and come and go on their own schedule. An early club called La Fraternal burned down; several of its members went on to found Unión Artesana in 1870, which is generally credited as the oldest txoko still operating today. From there the model spread across Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia, and became closely associated with San Sebastián’s reputation as a food city.
Historically these clubs were, and in some cases still are, restricted to male members. Guests, including women, have long been welcome to eat and drink, but membership itself, and with it the right to cook, tend bar, or vote on club business, was traditionally reserved for men. Under the Franco dictatorship, txokos also functioned as rare semi-private spaces where Basque language and social life could continue away from government scrutiny.
One note for anyone who has already read about Pamplona’s Plaza del Castillo: Bar Txoko, the historic Hemingway-associated bar on the square, takes its name from the same Basque word but is a specific, named bar, not a gastronomic society. The two are unrelated institutions that happen to share a word that simply means “corner.”
Pamplona’s Own Sociedades Gastronómicas
Pamplona’s version of this institution has its own founding date, and it did not arrive from San Sebastián by accident. According to the surviving internal history of Napardi, Pamplona’s oldest gastronomic society, a group of city residents who already knew each other through separate clubs, the Club de Montaña Navarra, the Amigos del Arte, and the Casino among them, decided in the early 1950s to found a society modeled on the ones they had heard about in Gipuzkoa. A delegation traveled to San Sebastián to visit the Sociedad Istingorrak and, by the society’s own account, came back intent on building something similar in Pamplona, reportedly starting from Istingorrak’s own bylaws as a template.
Napardi was formally constituted on 11 February 1953 at the premises of Club Deportivo Navarra, with Miguel Erice Martinicorena as its first president. Its founders rented a ground-floor space at Calle Mayor 35 for 550 pesetas a month and opened it on 18 March 1953. The name itself came from a non-member, a dairy-shop worker named Pepito Aramburu, who suggested combining “Navarra” with the Basque suffix “-di,” used to denote a place associated with something. Diario de Noticias de Navarra, which covered the society’s 70th anniversary in 2023, describes Napardi as the oldest gastronomic society in the capital.
Napardi was not the only one, and it isn’t the only one still standing. The City of Pamplona’s own registry of civic entities lists Sociedad Gastronómica Txoko Pelotazale, on Calle Merced, and Sociedad Gastronómica El Txoko del Carnicero, on Calle Julián Gayarre and linked to the city’s butchers’ guild, both currently active and both, like Napardi, run as members-only clubs rather than public restaurants. None of these are tourist-facing businesses. They are private clubs with private front doors, which is precisely why an institution this well documented in Navarra has never made it into English-language coverage of Basque food culture.
Txoko or Peña? Two Institutions Visitors Confuse
Anyone who has read up on San Fermín already knows the word peña: one of the 17 social clubs that organize processions, brass bands, and bullring seating during the festival, each with its own colors, headquarters, and roughly a century of history. Sociedades gastronómicas are easy to mistake for the same thing, and the confusion is understandable, because the two institutions overlap in membership and sometimes in real estate.
They are not the same institution, though, and Navarra’s own peña federation treats the distinction as worth defending. Coverage in Noticias de Navarra notes that the Federación de Peñas de Pamplona actively works to keep its member peñas from turning into little more than gastronomic societies, which only makes sense if the two are understood locally as related but separate categories: a peña exists primarily to run San Fermín itself, from processions to the communal cooking peñas do during fiesta week, while a sociedad gastronómica is a year-round private dining club with no built-in relationship to the festival calendar. Napardi’s original clubhouse on Calle Mayor, for what it’s worth, shared a building with Peña Anaitasuna for years, the peña upstairs and the gastronomic society on the ground floor, a small, literal illustration of how closely the two worlds have always sat next to each other without merging.
The one genuine point of contact between Napardi and San Fermín itself is the Gallico de Oro, an honor the society has awarded since the 1980s during Sanfermines. It’s a real, specific link to the festival, not a stretch, but it is also the exception. Most of what a sociedad gastronómica does happens the other 356 days of the year.
The Membership Fight No English Source Has Covered
Pamplona’s gastronomic societies are not just a historical curiosity. As of this year, one of them is in an active, public standoff with the regional government over who is allowed to join.
In March 2022, the EFE wire service confirmed that at least four Pamplona gastronomic societies still barred women from membership entirely: Napardi, Txoko Pelotazale, Gure Leku, and Reserva 1940. EFE’s reporting quoted the statutes directly. Napardi’s Article 2 restricted membership to “varones mayores de edad,” adult males. Gure Leku’s Article 2 used nearly identical language, as did Txoko Pelotazale’s Article 9, while Reserva 1940’s Article 9 limited membership to “varones mayores de 18 años.” Women could still enter as guests in all four clubs, but were barred from the bar and kitchen and from any vote on club decisions, and could not inherit a membership from a husband or father the way a son could. Eva Istúriz, then head of Navarra’s Instituto Navarro para la Igualdad (INAI), called the arrangement “anacrónico,” anachronistic, on the record.
The dispute is still unresolved four years later. In April 2026, Diario de Noticias de Navarra reported that Napardi’s general assembly had formally voted, on 21 March, to reject a request from INAI to revise its bylaws and admit women, after the institute received discrimination complaints and asked the society to review its rules. Napardi’s board, acting on legal advice, concluded that INAI has no binding power to force a private association to change its statutes. The Navarra government pushed back publicly: Javier Remírez, the regional vice president overseeing equality policy, stated that inequality “can never be disguised as misunderstood tradition” and argued that INAI does have standing to act under Navarra’s 2019 equality law. Neither side has backed down, and the outcome, as of this writing, is still open.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a txoko in the Basque Country?
A txoko, called a sociedad gastronómica in Spanish, is a private club where a fixed group of members share a rented or owned kitchen and dining space, doing their own shopping and cooking rather than being served. The institution began in San Sebastián in the late nineteenth century and later spread across the wider Basque Country and into Navarra.
Is txoko culture only found in San Sebastián?
No. San Sebastián is where the institution began and where it’s most closely associated in most write-ups, but Pamplona has run its own registered gastronomic societies since 1953, starting with Napardi. City records currently list active sociedades gastronómicas including Txoko Pelotazale and El Txoko del Carnicero.
Can women join a gastronomic society in Pamplona?
It depends on the society. Some admit women as full members; others do not. As of 2022, EFE confirmed that Napardi, Txoko Pelotazale, Gure Leku, and Reserva 1940 all restricted membership to men by statute, and as of April 2026, Napardi’s members had formally voted to keep that rule in place despite a request from Navarra’s equality institute to change it.
What is the difference between a txoko and a peña in Pamplona?
A peña is one of Pamplona’s 17 San Fermín social clubs, built around running the festival itself: processions, music, and bullring seating. A sociedad gastronómica is a private, year-round dining and cooking club with no built-in tie to the festival calendar, though some members belong to both and some clubhouses have historically shared buildings.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.