Every summer, eight towering figures spin through Pamplona’s streets, and almost every visitor who watches them assumes they are looking at costumes with a vague folkloric meaning: giants, four continents, an old tradition. What most accounts never mention is that each of those eight figures has an individual name, an individual character, and a real person underneath it who trained for months to carry between 56 and 64 kilograms on their shoulders while dancing in time to a brass band.
That gap matters because it flattens a living, physically demanding tradition into wallpaper. The gigantes are not static symbols wheeled out for photographs. They are carried, spun, and dipped low enough for children to kiss by rotating teams of bearers who risk sprains and worse on wet cobblestones, in a role that sometimes passes from parent to child. The kilikis and zaldikos that walk alongside them play the same game in reverse, chasing and swatting at the children who chase them right back, which is part of why the comparsa remains one of the festival’s most reliable draws for families alongside the Encierro Txiki bull runs staged for kids during the same nine days. In 2021, the city that owns these figures ran a formal conservation study and concluded its own 160-year-old comparsa needed a full digital preservation effort just to survive its own popularity.
This account draws on the Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s own tourism records, on-the-record reporting from Diario de Noticias de Navarra, including a direct interview with the president of the Comparsa de Gigantes y Cabezudos, and the reference history Gigantes de Navarra by Unai Lako and Aitor Calleja. The goal is simple: introduce the eight giants as the named characters they actually are, and explain what it takes, physically and institutionally, to keep them walking every July.
The giants have drawn outside attention before: Orson Welles filmed the Gigantes procession during one of his visits to San Fermín, footage folded into his long-unfinished Don Quixote, one entry in a documented wave of Hollywood visitors Pamplona’s own archive has traced back decades.
Eight Kings and Queens With Names of Their Own
Pamplona’s gigantes are eight papier mâché figures built in 1860 by the Navarrese painter Tadeo Amorena, replacing an older, worn set that had been in service since the 1600s. Amorena’s design paired each figure into four royal couples representing four continents as the nineteenth century understood them: European, Asian, African, and American. That basic structure has not changed in over 160 years.
What rarely makes it into general descriptions is that each figure carries its own name and its own small identity, repeated by Pamplona’s children for generations. The European king is Joshemiguelerico, paired with the European queen, Joshepamunda. The Asian king is Sidi Abd El Mohame, paired with the queen Esther Arata. The African king is Selim-Pia El Calzao, paired with the queen Larancha-la. The American king is Toko-Toko, paired with the queen Braulia. Each figure also carries a distinct prop: the European king holds a scepter and sword, the Asian king a Saracen sword, the American king a bow and quiver.
The giants stand between 3.45 and 3.50 meters tall on their own, reaching roughly 3.80 meters once mounted on a bearer’s shoulders, and weigh between 56 and 64 kilograms depending on the figure. They travel accompanied by musicians: two gaita pipers and a drummer walk with each giant, except for the American queen, who is instead accompanied by txistu players, a distinction that has held for generations.
Neither the txistu nor the gaita is the same instrument as the alboka, the double-piped Basque horn played with circular breathing, a rarer folk instrument with its own separate survival story.
The rest of the 25-figure comparsa, the five cabezudos, six kilikis, and six zaldikos, were added over the following decades rather than built all at once, which is why a close look at the figures shows real stylistic differences between them. The cabezudos, oversized ceremonial heads representing local authority figures, were built by another Navarrese artist, Félix Flores, in 1890. The kilikis and zaldikos arrived in stages between 1860 and 1941, made by several different workshops, which explains why some of the kilikis carry names as specific as their giant counterparts: Barbas, Patata, Berrugón, Coleta, Caravinagre, and Napoleón. Readers who want the full, source-verified timeline behind these dates, including why Pamplona’s own comparsa is not actually Spain’s oldest despite a popular claim, can find it in our separate breakdown of how Pamplona’s giants compare to those of Barcelona, Zaragoza, and Alicante.
Real People Carry Real Weight, and It Is Often a Family Trade
None of the gigantes move on their own. Each morning during San Fermín, roughly 58 bearers carry the full comparsa through Pamplona’s streets: three rotating bearers per giant, since the physical demands of carrying and dancing a 56 to 64 kilogram structure for hours require regular swaps, plus two bearers per cabezudo, kiliki, and zaldiko who trade off around midday.
Ibon Laspeñas, president of the Comparsa de Gigantes y Cabezudos and the bearer of the American king, told Diario de Noticias de Navarra in 2024 that dancing a giant is “a question of strength, but above all of balance.” A giant, he said, “weighs less when you carry it well balanced,” and learning to dance one properly takes many hours of dedicated practice rather than natural athleticism alone. His own father was also a member of the comparsa before him, a detail that reflects how the role often passes within families rather than opening to strangers each season.
Bearers rehearse from after Holy Week through the start of the festival to prepare the choreography, since a poorly balanced giant is both harder to carry and more dangerous to the crowds pressed close around it. That kind of unpaid, year round commitment to a single fiesta institution has a close cousin in Pamplona’s own peña clubs, whose members organize much of the rest of the festival’s street life the same way the comparsa’s bearers organize the giants. Falls are rare. Laspeñas noted the comparsa has gone many years without a giant hitting the ground, but the risk runs the other direction too: a damaged giant can be repaired, while a bearer who slips on wet or debris-strewn cobblestones risks a sprain or a more serious injury. Rain is treated as the figures’ primary enemy, since the giants are built of cartón piedra, papier mâché layered over a wooden frame, and bearers are trained to run for cover at the first sign of rain rather than risk the figures or their own footing.
The Comparsa Failed Its Own City’s Inspection in 2021
In June 2021, the Ayuntamiento de Pamplona presented the results of a formal conservation study of the entire 25-figure comparsa, carried out by the heritage restoration firm Sagarte Servicios Artísticos y Restauración SI. The study documented what more than 160 years of daily street use and repeated repairs had done to figures never designed to sit in a museum. It combined chemical material analysis, ultraviolet photometry to detect old repainting, and a full damage map of each individual piece. The findings showed a shift over the decades from the original papier mâché toward modern reinforcing materials like epoxy resin and fiberglass in the bodies and frames, while the heads, closer to the public and more visible, mostly retain their original material.
Culture councillor María García-Barberena described the figures as antiques in their own right, more than 160 years old, and noted that as festival objects that interact directly with street crowds rather than sitting behind glass, they face conservation problems that standard museum practice does not fully anticipate.
Rather than simply patch the damage, the city commissioned a complete 3D digital scan of all 25 figures, giants both dressed and stripped to their wooden frames, cabezudos, kilikis, and zaldikos alike. Two Navarrese firms handled the work: FOVEA servicios de escaneado 3D used long-range laser scanning accurate to two millimeters from distances up to 150 meters for the main bodies, while One Voxel used structured-light scanning accurate to fractions of a millimeter for smaller elements like arms and accessories. The scanning itself took about a week, with photogrammetry-based texture work and post-processing adding roughly a month. The resulting models, released publicly with and without their painted textures, preserve the figures’ exact current geometry and color for the first time in a format that will not degrade the way the physical originals inevitably will.
Where the Giants Live When They Are Not Dancing
For most of the year, the comparsa is stored in dedicated rooms at Pamplona’s bus station, where school groups can arrange visits through the city’s cultural programming. During San Fermín itself, the figures move each night to the Palacio de Ezpeleta rather than making the longer trip back to permanent storage.
Maintenance is a year-round job rather than a pre-festival scramble. A specialized restoration firm repairs the dents, scuffs, and structural wear the figures accumulate over their nine annual outings between July 6 and 14, while the costumes are separately dry-cleaned after the festival ends. Outside San Fermín, the comparsa also appears for the Privilege of the Union on September 8, San Fermín Txikito on the last weekend of September, and the feast of San Saturnino, Pamplona’s actual patron saint, on November 29, a smaller but steady annual calendar built around a city that treats these figures as civic property rather than seasonal decoration.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much do the giants of Pamplona weigh?
Pamplona’s eight gigantes weigh between 56 and 64 kilograms each, according to the reference history Gigantes de Navarra and Comparsa president Ibon Laspeñas. The figures themselves stand 3.45 to 3.50 meters tall, reaching about 3.80 meters once mounted on a bearer’s shoulders.
Who carries the gigantes during San Fermín?
Volunteer bearers who train and rehearse for months carry the figures. Roughly 58 bearers work the full comparsa each morning of the festival, with three people rotating on each giant and two on each cabezudo, kiliki, and zaldiko, swapping partway through the morning because of the physical demands of carrying and dancing the figures.
What are the names of Pamplona’s giants?
The eight giants are four royal couples: the European king Joshemiguelerico and queen Joshepamunda, the Asian king Sidi Abd El Mohame and queen Esther Arata, the African king Selim-Pia El Calzao and queen Larancha-la, and the American king Toko-Toko and queen Braulia.
Are Pamplona’s gigantes the original 1860 figures?
Yes. The eight giants walking Pamplona’s streets today are the same figures Tadeo Amorena built in 1860, making them more than 160 years old. A 2021 city conservation study found the figures showing real wear from daily use and commissioned a full 3D digital scan to preserve their exact current form.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.