Every night of San Fermín, from July 6 through July 14, a fireworks collection fires over Pamplona at 23:00 from inside La Ciudadela. In Spanish pyrotechnic vocabulary, a display like this has a specific name: a castillo, literally a castle. In Pamplona’s own documented civic history, that word is not a generic figure of speech. It traces back to an actual wooden castle, built and burned as part of a mock naval battle in 1596, in what is one of the earliest and most thoroughly documented fuegos artificiales San Fermín records anywhere in Spain.
Most visitors treat the nightly fireworks as scenery, the thing that lights up the sky after the bulls and the peñas have gone quiet for the day. That framing misses what the display actually is: a nine night, internationally judged pyrotechnics competition with named designers, a public vote, and a format the city rebuilt from scratch in 2017. Understanding that turns a pretty light show into something closer to what it really is, a contest with more institutional history behind it than almost anything else on the fiesta calendar outside the encierro itself.
This account draws on Pamplona’s own municipal archives, as researched by Navarrese historians Luis del Campo and José Joaquín Arazuri and reported by the Basque newspaper GARA, cross checked against the Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s current published rules and 2026 program for the Concurso Internacional de Fuegos Artificiales San Fermín, and against regional press coverage of the 2026 fiesta.
The 1596 Naumaquia That Named the “Castillo”
The earliest documented pyrotechnic performance during San Fermín took place in 1596, five years after the fiesta itself moved to July. It was not a simple rocket display. City chroniclers describe a naumaquia, a staged naval battle, a tradition with Roman roots, restaged in Pamplona’s Plaza del Castillo. Four fire ships attacked a wooden castle built specifically for the occasion, and the castle burned as the climax of the show.
A surviving municipal account ledger, partially burned and difficult to read even today, records the payment: 150 reales to a Pamplona pyrotechnician named Juan de Muino, described as compensation for “la invención que sacó de navíos y Castillo con troneras y otros artificios de fuego,” the invention of ships and a castle with gun ports and other fire devices. The ledger notes the show ran from the feast of San Juan through the day the bulls were run, and that the payment itself was recorded on July 15.
Muino was not a professional pyrotechnician by trade. He belonged to Pamplona’s guild of wax makers, the gremio de los cereros, which meant he already worked with wicks and wax stoppers used to time when gunpowder charges ignited, a skill that transferred directly to pyrotechnics.
That 1596 spectacle is why Spanish pyrotechnicians, in Pamplona and elsewhere, still call a fireworks display a castillo. In the city’s own documented account, the term is not an abstraction. It commemorates a specific wooden castle that burned in Plaza del Castillo, more than four centuries ago, at the start of a tradition that never really stopped.
A Tradition the City Can Trace, Almost Without a Gap
Historian Luis del Campo, whose research is collected in “Historia de los fuegos artificiales en Pamplona,” found a second documented payment from 1601: five ducados paid by the city for that year’s display. Digging further into the same municipal records, del Campo and later researchers found that Muino launched 33 dozen “güetes,” or roughly 396 rockets, during the 1601 San Fermín, and staged another naval battle spectacle that October, this time to mark the birth of Princess Ana, daughter of King Felipe III.
Del Campo believed shows almost certainly happened between 1596 and 1601 as well, even without surviving paperwork to prove it, given how established the practice already looked by the turn of the century. What the record does confirm, independently verified by the Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s own account of its “registros de contratación,” is that fireworks contracts for San Fermín date back to 1596 and have continued, with only rare interruptions, ever since. As of the 2026 fiesta, that is 430 years.
The location moved over time. The 1596 naumaquia happened in Plaza del Castillo, not inside La Ciudadela, which had only existed for about 25 years at that point and was not yet the city’s pyrotechnic staging ground. The launch site shifted to what is now the Parque de la Vuelta del Castillo, inside the citadel’s grounds, where it remains today. The park closes to the public each July specifically to accommodate the display and the debris it leaves behind, one of the least understood facts about the citadel among visitors who show up expecting to walk its grounds during fiesta week.
The fireworks are also anchored to a fixed point in San Fermín’s daily rhythm. Every night at 23:00, regardless of what else the day held, from the morning encierro to the afternoon recortes to the evening’s peña dinners, the sky over the Ciudadela lights up on schedule.
From Company Brand to Named Designer
The modern Concurso Internacional de Fuegos Artificiales San Fermín began in the year 2000, formalizing what had been an informal civic tradition into a structured annual competition. For its first 17 years, pyrotechnic companies competed under their own names, and the palmarés from that era, kept by the Ayuntamiento and mirrored on Wikipedia, reads like a directory of Spain’s major fireworks houses: Pirotecnia Zaragozana, Pirotecnia Vulcano, Vicente Caballer and his family’s later ventures, and others.
In 2017, the city rebuilt the format entirely. Instead of crediting a company, each of the nine nights is now designed by, and credited to, a named individual: a “fuegos de autor” format, author’s fireworks. A designer submits a concept, partners with a pyrotechnic company to produce it, and the show carries that designer’s name, not just their employer’s.
The rules are specific and identical for every competitor. Each display must run at least 13 minutes and work within an equal budget, roughly 22,566 euros per collection as of the mid 2020s, so no team can simply outspend the others. Every show must include two mandatory artistic elements: an opening sequence at least 30 seconds long using only white and red light, launched as silent ground level single shots with no aerial sound, followed by a second, unrestricted aerial section that must be asymmetric, deliberately different on each side of the sky rather than a mirrored design.
A technical jury, chaired by the city’s Culture councillor and including an invited pyrotechnician, a working artist, and the Ayuntamiento’s Culture department director, awards three prizes: San Fermín de Oro, Plata, and Bronce. Pamplona’s public also votes, in person at Civivox Condestable and the city’s Tourism Office or online, for an honorary audience prize. The 2025 edition marked its own milestone: for the first time in the contest’s history, and in 429 years of documented fireworks contracts before it, women pyrotechnicians outnumbered men among the nine designers.
Watching the Show Without Getting in Its Way
The fuegos artificiales San Fermín fire every night, July 6 through July 14, at 23:00, from inside La Ciudadela. The Ayuntamiento closes the park to the public from the afternoon of July 5 until all pyrotechnic debris has been cleared, and the streets immediately surrounding the citadel close or restrict traffic between roughly 22:00 and 23:30 each night the show runs.
The city’s own guidance tells spectators to watch from a distance and stay well clear of any fenced or restricted zone rather than crowd against it. If unexploded pyrotechnic material turns up nearby, the guidance is simple: don’t touch it, move away, and call the emergency services. Public transport is recommended over driving, since the closures make the streets around the Ciudadela difficult to navigate by car in the final hour before and after the display.
Thousands of people gather each night to watch, many of them on the grass of the Vuelta del Castillo, the park that rings the citadel and doubles as one of the city’s most reliable fireworks vantage points once the display itself begins outside the fenced launch area.
The closure that frustrates visitors expecting to walk the citadel grounds during fiesta week is the same closure that makes the show possible. Nine straight nights of pyrotechnic charges leave real debris behind inside the park, and clearing it safely takes time, which is why La Ciudadela typically stays shut for days after the fiesta itself has ended on July 14. For a display with a documented run stretching back to 1596, the wait is a small price for a tradition that has rarely, if ever, skipped a year.
Frequently Asked Questions
What time are the San Fermín fireworks?
The fireworks fire nightly at 23:00 (11 PM), every night of the fiesta from July 6 through July 14. The time has stayed fixed for years and is confirmed both by the Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s own festival site and by regional press coverage of each year’s program.
Where are the San Fermín fireworks launched from?
They launch from inside La Ciudadela, specifically the Parque de la Vuelta del Castillo, which closes to the public during fiesta week to accommodate the display. That was not always the location. The earliest documented show, in 1596, took place in Plaza del Castillo.
How old is the San Fermín fireworks tradition?
Documented municipal payment records for fireworks during San Fermín date to 1596, making 2026 the 430th year the city can trace the tradition through its own archives. Historians consider it one of the best documented fireworks traditions in Spain.
Is there a fireworks competition during San Fermín?
Yes. The Concurso Internacional de Fuegos Artificiales San Fermín has run since 2000 and pits nine pyrotechnic teams against each other, one per night of the fiesta. Since 2017, each night’s show has been credited to a named designer rather than just a company, under a format the city calls “fuegos de autor.”
In Basque, San Fermín’s own festival materials label this display su artifizialak, the same fireworks that in Spanish give their name, castillo, to every display fired since.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.