Nearly every account of Pamplona’s gigantes y cabezudos repeats the same claim: the tradition dates to 1276, making it the oldest giants-and-bigheads procession in Spain. That date comes from a historical novel, Arturo Campion’s Don Garcia Almoravid, not from a chronicle, a municipal record, or a church account. The best-documented history of Pamplona’s own comparsa, drawn from the city’s own published archives, places the first real record of a giants procession in Pamplona at 1600, more than three centuries later than the number that keeps getting repeated as fact.
That gap matters beyond trivia. Pamplona’s tourism identity leans hard on being first, oldest, or most authentic, and the encierro genuinely earns that reputation. The giants do not. Once the fictional 1276 date is set aside, Pamplona’s documented giants tradition turns out to be younger than Barcelona’s, which has a giant on record in a Corpus Christi procession in 1424, and roughly contemporary with, rather than centuries ahead of, Alicante’s, which a historian has placed at the end of 1439.
This piece traces the real, source-verified timeline of gigantes y cabezudos across four Spanish cities: Pamplona, Barcelona, Zaragoza, and Alicante. Sources include the city-published history Historias del viejo Pamplona by Juan Jose Martinena Ruiz, the reference work Gigantes de Navarra by Unai Lako and Aitor Calleja, municipal tourism pages for Pamplona and Zaragoza, and a doctoral-level historical study of Alicante’s own giants tradition. Pamplona’s own four figures, the Gigantes, Cabezudos, Kilikis, and Zaldikos, appear here only as the comparison baseline; each is defined in full in the Running of the Bulls Vocabulary glossary, and the giants themselves, their individual names, and the bearers who carry them get their own dedicated coverage in a separate piece on Pamplona’s gigantes.
Where the 1276 Date Actually Comes From
The number gets attached to a specific, oddly precise story: three giants supposedly processed through Pamplona in 1276 representing three residents of the city, a woodcutter named Pero Suciales, a villager named Mari Suciales, and a Jewish resident named Jucef Lacurari. It sounds like a documented event because it comes with names.
It is not documented. Spanish-language sources tracing the claim are explicit that it originates in a novel, not a record. The broader Wikipedia entry on gigantes y cabezudos in Spain frames it plainly: the “first written references” to this 1276 date appear in novels, not in historical sources. No procession list, city account book, or church register from the 13th century has ever surfaced to back it up. Medieval Pamplona in 1276 was in the middle of violent conflict between its three warring boroughs, a period documented through royal charters and chronicles that say nothing about a giants procession.
What the city’s own archives do support is a first mention in 1600, followed by an actual paper trail: in 1657, a craftsman named Francisco de Azpigalla built eight giants and two smaller “gigantillos” for a documented cost of 4,064 reales. Through the late 1600s and 1700s, both Pamplona’s cathedral and its Ayuntamiento kept their own separate sets of giants for religious processions. That is a real institutional history, verified through municipal records, not a single suspiciously specific anecdote from a 19th-century novel.
The Real Setback: 1780, Not a Gap in the Record
Pamplona’s giants tradition has one genuine documented crisis, and it is not a mystery about origins. In 1780, King Carlos III banned the giants from religious processions, treating them as a distraction from proper worship. The Ayuntamiento’s set of figures was destroyed outright. The cathedral’s set survived only because it was quietly put into storage and largely forgotten.
For much of that earlier history, the comparsa’s first outing of the year accompanied city officials on their walk to Mass on the eve of the fiesta, the same walk that later gave its name to the Riau-Riau tradition, before that procession was discontinued. Those abandoned cathedral giants sat unused for over three decades until 1813, when a carpenter rediscovered them: six figures representing a Turkish pair, a Moorish pair, and a Caucasian pair. They were restored in 1839, but by then their condition was poor enough that a Navarrese painter named Tadeo Amorena wrote to the Ayuntamiento in 1860 proposing something new: giants of the same scale as the old ones, but lighter and built to more careful academic proportions. The council liked his first pair enough to commission the rest. Those are, essentially, the same eight giants Pamplona still runs today, representing four paired kingdoms: European, Asian, African, and American royalty.
The cabezudos most visitors recognize came later still, five figures built by Felix Flores in 1890: the Alcalde, the Concejal, the Abuela, and a Japanese king and queen. The kilikis trace to a 16th-century figure type once called “gigantillos,” renamed cabezudos or “bocaparteras” by the mid-1800s; one theory ties the word kiliki to the Basque kili-kili, meaning tickle. The zaldikos, the horse-and-rider figures, include pieces dating to 1910. None of this needs an inflated origin story. The documented version is already a four-century institutional history.
Barcelona and Zaragoza: Two Different Timelines, Two Different Symbolisms
Barcelona’s own giants tradition has a real documented date earlier than Pamplona’s: a giant named Goliat took part in a Corpus Christi procession in 1424. Catalonia’s gegants i capgrossos began as religious theater for an illiterate public, staging biblical figures and vices for a churchgoing audience rather than functioning as local mascots. A giantess figure appears by the 16th century, and capgrossos, oversized comic heads that are the direct Catalan counterpart to Pamplona’s cabezudos, developed afterward. It was only in the 19th century that Catalan towns began using their gegants to represent local identity instead of scripture; Barcelona’s own city giants now depict King Jaume I and Queen Violant of Hungary rather than a biblical scene.
Zaragoza’s tradition is younger than both. The first documented references to gigantes y cabezudos there date to 1807, originally a single family group, a father, a mother, and two sons, plus four small horses, staged as part of a Corpus Christi procession where the giants represented good and the cabezudos represented evil. Zaragoza’s comparsa has since grown considerably: it now counts 27 figures, 14 giants, 11 cabezudos, and two little horses, with the newest additions made in 2022, making it one of the largest such groupings in the country. The tradition is embedded deeply enough in the city’s identity that an 1898 zarzuela titled Gigantes y Cabezudos, set during Zaragoza’s own Fiestas del Pilar, helped popularize the phrase nationally.
Alicante: Older Than Its Own Festival, By Centuries
Alicante’s case complicates the usual assumption that this is purely a northern Spanish tradition. A doctoral study by historian Rufino Gea places Alicante’s own Giants and Big-heads at the end of 1439, contemporary with the giant traditions of France and Belgium that UNESCO jointly recognized as Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2005. The earliest date that can be documented with full confidence is 1661, still well ahead of Zaragoza’s 1807 and in the same range as Barcelona’s 1424.
What makes Alicante’s case unusual is that its giants are considerably older than the festival most visitors associate them with. The Hogueras de San Juan, Alicante’s best-known summer festival, was not founded until 1928. The city’s Colla de Nanos i Gegants, tracing its own roots to the 15th century, was folded into the Hogueras program only in the 20th century, after already existing as part of Alicante’s own Corpus Christi tradition for hundreds of years. Alicante’s figures also carry individual names in a way Pamplona’s largely do not: Carolina la alicantina, Benalua la mora, Joanet and Blasset, the drunks Roc and Anton, and an aunt figure called Tia Tonica.
There is one older Iberian record still, though it belongs to Portugal rather than Spain: a Corpus Christi procession in Evora in 1265, predating even the fictional 1276 Pamplona date by more than a decade. That detail alone should settle the “oldest in Spain” claim: the real contest for oldest documented giants tradition on the peninsula isn’t close, and it was never Pamplona’s to win in the first place.
What This Means for How Pamplona’s Comparsa Should Be Understood
None of this diminishes Pamplona’s giants. A four-century paper trail, a religious ban that nearly ended the tradition, a rediscovery in a storeroom, and a painter’s 1860 redesign that is still walked through the streets today is a genuinely strong institutional history. It just is not the oldest one, and it was never based on the 1276 date that keeps circulating. Readers researching gegants i capgrossos, Alicante’s nanos, or Zaragoza’s own comparsa deserve a timeline that holds up, not a repeated error. It sits alongside Pamplona’s other living, daily traditions of fiesta week, like the recortes and vaquillas performed in the bullring each afternoon, as proof that San Fermin’s identity was built well past the encierro itself.
The Ayuntamiento de Pamplona tourism page documents the modern comparsa’s role during San Fermin, including the nine outings the giants make between July 6 and 14 and the closing “despedida,” where the cabezudos, kilikis, and zaldikos hand out sweets to the children they have spent the week chasing. For readers who want the parallel story from Aragon, Zaragoza’s own city government maintains a page on its Gigantes y Cabezudos tradition during the Fiestas del Pilar. That closing chase-and-treat ritual is one small part of a much larger slate of children’s programming during San Fermin, including two separate kids’ bull runs that are easy to mix up; this guide to Encierro Txiki and family activities covers how to tell them apart.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it true that Pamplona has the oldest gigantes y cabezudos tradition in Spain?
No. The claim rests on a supposed 1276 procession that comes from a historical novel, not a documented source. Pamplona’s own best-sourced archives place the first real record of a giants comparsa at 1600, which is later than Barcelona’s documented 1424 Corpus Christi giant and close to, not centuries ahead of, Alicante’s tradition, dated by a historian to the end of 1439.
What is the difference between gigantes and cabezudos?
Gigantes are the towering figures, generally 3 to 4 meters tall, carried by a bearer hidden inside the structure who spins and dances them to music. Cabezudos are smaller, closer to human scale, with an oversized head worn like a costume; the person underneath uses one hand to steady the head and the other to swat at the crowd with a soft implement, usually to the delight of chasing children.
Are Catalonia’s gegants i capgrossos the same tradition as Pamplona’s gigantes y cabezudos?
They are the same broader Iberian tradition under different regional names, both tracing back to medieval Corpus Christi processions. Capgrossos are Catalonia’s direct equivalent to cabezudos. The traditions developed on separate timelines in each region, which is why a single “oldest in Spain” claim does not hold up once each city’s own documented history is checked individually.
Does Pamplona’s comparsa include a figure called Nanos?
No. Nanos is the name used in Alicante and the wider Valencian region for cabezudos-style figures. Pamplona’s own comparsa consists of Gigantes, Cabezudos, Kilikis, and Zaldikos, four distinct figure types with no Nanos among them.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.