Every morning of San Fermín, at 6:45 AM, a band called La Pamplonesa gathers in the Plaza Consistorial and marches through Pamplona’s old town playing four songs on a loop, waking up a city that in many cases never went to sleep. Most guides describe this as if it were medieval, an unbroken folk custom stretching back centuries. It isn’t. The Dianas began as a single newspaper’s suggestion in 1876, were played for four decades by military bands the public actively disliked, collapsed entirely in 1917, and had to be rebuilt from nothing three years later by three named Pamplona residents who wanted the city to have its own band instead of borrowing one from the army.
Getting the origin wrong matters because it changes what the ritual actually is. A "tradition" implies something that emerged organically from the people. The Dianas were designed, by a specific editor, adopted by the city council, and then redesigned when the first version failed. That’s a more interesting story than folklore, and it explains details competitors gloss over: why the four tunes have names instead of just being anonymous filler, why a band with no military rank plays them today, and why the crowd singing along every morning is participating in something closer to a hundred-year-old civic invention than an ancient rite.
This account draws on Pamplona’s own city government, which documents the 1917 collapse and 1920 refounding of the band on its San Fermín site, cross-checked against Spain’s national historical press archive for the founding of the newspaper that started it all, and against independent tourism-industry accounts of the songs and route.
Not a Tradition. A Newspaper’s Idea.
The Dianas exist because of a newspaper editor’s proposal, not a folk custom that predates recorded memory. El Eco de Navarra, a liberal Pamplona paper founded in November 1875 under editor Nicanor Espoz (renamed from El Eco de Pamplona that January), suggested that the city wake fiesta-goers with a band marching through the streets an hour before the encierro. Pamplona’s city council liked the idea and adopted it. The first Dianas were played on the morning of July 7, 1876, the feast day of San Fermín itself.
The first performer wasn’t even a proper municipal band. It was the band of "La Meca," the popular nickname for the Casa de la Misericordia, Pamplona’s historic charitable institution for the poor, which maintained its own musicians. That band played the Dianas alone for two years before anyone else joined in.
This detail is worth sitting with: one of the loudest, most beloved moments of San Fermín, the sound that fiesta veterans associate with the smell of dawn and the last hours of an all-night crawl through the old town, started as a marketing idea from a 19th-century newspaper and was first performed by a charity band, not a city institution built for the job. San Fermín traditions get reverse-engineered into ancient folklore all the time. This one has a documented invention date.
Forty Years of Military Bands, and Why They Disappeared
For most of its first half-century, the Dianas were a military affair, and that turned out to be the problem. The Misericordia band’s solo run ended in 1878, when the military band of the Gerona Regiment joined in. By 1880, additional army bands had joined as well, and for the next four decades, soldiers, not civilians, provided San Fermín’s wake-up call.
It didn’t last, and the reason is specific rather than vague: according to Pamplona’s own city government, the military bands "were not popular with the public." The disconnect between soldiers playing a civic celebration and the townspeople who actually lived it grew wide enough that, in 1917, the military bands stopped providing the Dianas altogether.
That left a gap. For three years, San Fermín’s signature morning ritual had no fixed home. The fiesta didn’t quietly drop the custom and move on, which is what would have happened if the Dianas were a minor add-on rather than something Pamplona had already decided it needed. Instead, the city rebuilt it.
La Pamplonesa: Built From Scratch in 1920
Three named residents are responsible for the Dianas as they exist today: Silvano Cervantes, Manuel Zugarrondo, and Vicente Sadaba. In 1920, the trio proposed to the Ayuntamiento that Pamplona form its own civilian band, rather than continue depending on the military bands that had just abandoned the role. The council agreed, and La Pamplonesa was created that year.
The name change from soldiers to civilians wasn’t cosmetic. La Pamplonesa became the band tied to the city’s own institutions: it plays at council functions, performs at the Plaza de Toros, and, every morning of the fiesta, plays the Dianas before the encierro. More than a century later, it still does.
Cervantes did not stop at founding the band. He is also the person credited with arranging the specific melodies that make up the modern Dianas repertoire, which brings the story to what the crowd is actually singing along to.
Four Songs, One Composer, No Fixed Order
Nineteenth-century Dianas drew from a wider set of "popular tunes." By the 20th century, that had been narrowed to exactly four pieces, referred to simply as "uno," "dos," "tres," and "cuatro." They’re anonymous folk melodies in origin, but Silvano Cervantes, the same man behind La Pamplonesa’s founding, is the one who set them to music in the arrangement still played today. "Dos" carries its own name, "Aurora" (dawn), and was the first of the four performed each morning. "Cuatro" is also known as "La Gacela," the gazelle.
The band doesn’t play the four in a fixed sequence. Once one tune ends, whoever’s in the crowd shouts for another, "the two," "the three," and La Pamplonesa tries to comply within reason. It functions less like a scripted parade and more like an open request set, with the same four songs cycling in whatever order the street wants that morning.
Two singalong choruses travel with the event by name. One, "Quinto, levanta, tira de la manta," is a mock reveille aimed at waking a sleeping military recruit ("quinto" is Spanish for a conscript; the line translates roughly to "recruit, get up, pull off the blanket"), a fitting holdover from the Dianas’ own origin as a literal wake-up call. The other is a call-and-response chant beginning "Todos los curas suelen venir."
What Actually Happens at 6:45 AM
Every morning from July 7 to 14, La Pamplonesa assembles in the Plaza Consistorial, in front of the town hall, and sets off at 6:45 AM through the streets of Pamplona’s Casco Antiguo. The route shifts slightly day to day, but it has run through streets including Navarrería, Pozoblanco, Zapatería, Calceteros, Recoletas, Taconera, and Mañueta before the band returns to the Ayuntamiento’s doors.
The scene the band walks into is part of a larger transformation described in detail in how the encierro morning unfolds: carpenters are still finishing the wooden barrera fencing along the encierro route, city cleaning crews are working through the debris of the night before, people who rose before dawn to claim a spot along the course are filing toward the barricades, and people who never went to bed at all are still out, several drinks past their last meal, ready to sing along with a marching band one more time before the bulls run. Hot broth is handed out to the early crowd before the encierro starts, a practical gesture for anyone who’s been standing outside since well before sunrise.
Pamplona’s city government calls it one of the most special moments of the entire nine days, and the description holds up: the Dianas aren’t a scheduled tourist spectacle bolted onto the fiesta program. They’re a hundred-plus-year-old civic invention that failed once, got rebuilt by three people with names and a plan, and turned into the sound the city now can’t imagine San Fermín without.
Frequently Asked Questions
What time are the Dianas in San Fermín?
La Pamplonesa begins playing at 6:45 AM every morning from July 7 through July 14, starting from the Plaza Consistorial in front of Pamplona’s town hall.
Who plays the Dianas in Pamplona?
La Pamplonesa, Pamplona’s civilian municipal band, founded in 1920. From the late 1960s onward it has been joined on the route by a military band, txistularis (players of the Basque txistu pipe), and gaiteros (Navarrese and Basque bagpipers).
How old is the Dianas tradition?
The first Dianas were played on July 7, 1876, making the custom just over 150 years old. It is not medieval or pre-modern. It began as a proposal from the Pamplona newspaper El Eco de Navarra and was adopted by the city council that year.
What songs are played during the Dianas?
Four tunes, known simply as "uno," "dos," "tres," and "cuatro." They’re anonymous in origin but were arranged by Silvano Cervantes, the same man who helped found La Pamplonesa in 1920. "Dos" is also called "Aurora" and "cuatro" is also called "La Gacela."
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.