Ask most guides to Pamplona’s peñas about Oberena and the entry usually stops at one line: founded 1941, green and black colors, headquarters on Calle Jarauta. What that line leaves out is that Oberena’s own members are still called “Gaseoseros,” soda-pop drinkers, a nickname a rival club invented 83 years ago to mock the peña’s churchy, teetotal image. Instead of shaking the insult off, Oberena wrote it directly into its own anthem, and that anthem was recorded again, professionally, by a Basque jazz band, in July 2026.
That gap matters because it is the difference between treating Pamplona’s peñas as one interchangeable block of costumed street bands and understanding that each of the city’s eighteen registered peñas carries its own specific, sometimes unflattering origin story that its own members still perform every July. Oberena’s insult turned anthem is one of the more direct examples of that pattern anywhere in San Fermín, and it is not archival trivia. The 2026 recording happened this month.
This account of peña Oberena Pamplona history draws on the peña’s own institutional archive at oberena.org, the Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s own entity registry, the Spanish-language Wikipedia entry on Club Deportivo Oberena, and a July 2026 report in Navarra’s regional press on the anthem’s new recording, cross checked against each other and against the Encierro project’s own vocabulary reference for the peña’s colors.
From a Catholic Youth Meeting to a Fiesta Peña
Oberena did not start as a fiesta club. It began December 12, 1940, out of a meeting at the diocesan premises of Acción Católica on Calle Zapatería 40, in a Pamplona of roughly 60,000 people still recovering from the Spanish Civil War. The idea belonged to a priest, Don Santos Beguiristain, who wanted to give the city’s young people organized activity and diversion after several very hard years.
The San Fermín peña specifically came later, and it came by vote. At the group’s third meeting, January 20, 1941, members decided to launch a peña to animate the city’s streets for the coming Sanfermines. Pamplona’s own city hall registry lists 1941 as the peña’s founding year, one year after the parent organization itself, a detail the Spanish Wikipedia entry on Club Deportivo Oberena states directly as well: the peña was “founded in 1941, one year after the founding of the club.”
Around 60 members paid dues that first year, covering tickets, refreshments, and wineskins. José Joaquín Ardanaz became the peña’s first delegate, and the first processional banner was painted by his own brother, Nicolás. The txaranga was organized by the composer known as maestro Turrillas, who brought in musicians from Barásoain with reinforcements from nearby Tafalla. Founding members also debated, and ultimately decided, to wear the Acción Católica shield visibly on their white shirts during the fiesta, despite the era’s frowning on excessive drinking, a decision that would come back to bite them within a year.
The Insult That Became Oberena’s Own Anthem
That shield, and the peña’s Catholic Action roots, gave a rival club the opening it wanted. According to Oberena’s own history, a nearby, fancier establishment invented a taunt aimed squarely at Oberena’s pious, supposedly dry image: “¡Oberena! ¡Gaseosa! ¡Se emborracha! ¡Con sifón!”, roughly, “Oberena! Soda pop! Getting drunk on seltzer!”, the implication being that Oberena’s members only drank soda water.
Oberena’s members did not fight the insult. They sang it back, flipped. The peña’s own account records the self mocking reply that went with it: “y aunque digan que nos gusta la gaseosa, que nos regalen un garrafón”, loosely, “and even though they say we like soda pop, let them give us a whole jug of wine instead.” The nickname stuck, and by the peña’s own admission, there are still people who call its members Gaseoseros today.
The peña’s anthem grew directly out of that exchange. Its music is credited to maestro Manuel Turrillas, the same Navarran composer behind several of Pamplona’s other peña hymns, and its lyrics are credited separately to Maxi Aramburu. That composer and lyricist split is not something most peña profiles bother to note, since it is far more common for a single name to get credit for both music and words.
The full lyrics are not reproduced here. A real recorded performance carries the anthem, and its Gaseoseros call and response, better than a page of transcribed verses would.
1943: The Year Oberena Was the Only Peña in the Street
By 1942, the young peña had a budget of 3,500 pesetas and 100 dues-paying members, along with an internal rule against seeking outside financial subsidies, a small but deliberate stance for a club barely a year old. That same founding year, before any of the disputes below, Oberena also began a tradition it still keeps today: an annual visit to the children living at two Pamplona charitable homes, la Meca and la Providencia, bringing an afternoon of company and activity rather than money. It is the earliest recorded example of what would later become the peña’s more formal charitable identity.
The peña’s financial independence was tested directly the following year. In 1943, Pamplona’s city council introduced a new tax on the closed-door dances that peñas organized during the fiesta season. Every peña in the city, Oberena included at first, agreed not to march that year in Sanfermines unless the council withdrew the tax.
The council held its position. Oberena broke ranks and marched anyway, becoming, by its own account, the only peña visible on Pamplona’s streets that Sanfermines. The decision drew both criticism from peñas that had held the line and considerable goodwill from residents who simply wanted a fiesta with music in it. It is the kind of civic dispute, over a municipal tax rather than anything else, that shows up in Pamplona’s peña history far more often than most visitors would guess, and it set a pattern of going its own way that the peña would repeat, in gentler form, decades later with its own charity award.
Present Day: Jarauta 82, La Mandarra Solidaria, and a 2026 Recording
Oberena’s clubhouse today sits at Calle Joaquín Jarauta 82, on the ground floor, in the Casco Antiguo, the same old-quarter neighborhood that functions as San Fermín’s nerve center. Getting there took decades. The peña moved between rented spaces, including Calle Zapatería 40, the Labrit pelota court, Calle Calderería 20, Calle Jarauta 11, and Calle San Lorenzo 31, before the Jarauta 82 clubhouse finally opened on February 20, 2010, giving Oberena its first headquarters independent of its parent sports institution.
Pamplona’s own registry lists the peña’s identificativo as a red pañuelo and red faja, the standard neckerchief and sash of Sanfermines, with the peña’s own shield stitched onto the pañuelo itself. Its blusón, the peña jacket worn over the white fiesta outfit, is green, white, and black. The name Oberena is Basque for “the best.”
Women joined the peña’s governing board in 2000, and in 2001 María Solchaga became Oberena’s first female delegate. Since 2012, the peña has run its own charity tradition, La Mandarra Solidaria, created at the request of one of its internal cuadrillas, Zaharrak. Each year members vote on a Navarra-based humanitarian organization to support, fund it through a communal meal cooked in the peña’s own kitchen using ingredients donated by neighborhood bars, and hand over the total on the peña’s designated Día de la Peña. Recipients have included the Asociación de Ayuda al Cáncer Infantil de Navarra, ADACEN, Proyecto Gosariak, and the Asociación Navarra de Autismo, among others. Pamplona’s own city hall registers eighteen peñas, and Oberena’s charity tradition is one of the more sustained examples of what those clubs do outside of the nine days of the festival itself, in the same spirit that runs through Peña Aldapa’s own uneven, unglamorous history.
The peña’s current txaranga, Iraunkorrak, has played with Oberena for more than three decades and once placed second in a competition Pamplona’s Hotel Maisonave runs to identify the city’s best street band. And on July 1, 2026, Aldapeko Basque Latin Jazz, a Rotterdam-founded group that fuses traditional Basque instruments with Latin rhythm and jazz improvisation, released a new single titled “Oberena,” an adaptation of the peña’s original anthem credited to “maestro Manuel Turrillas.” The track, recorded at Estudio Patio de Manzana in Madrid and Erviti Studio in Pamplona, is not an archival footnote. It is this month’s proof that an 83-year-old insult is still being sung. Turrillas’s own peña songbook stretches well beyond Oberena, and San Fermín’s music has far more named composers than its “ancient and anonymous” reputation suggests.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was Peña Oberena founded?
Oberena’s parent organization was founded December 12, 1940. The San Fermín peña itself was voted into existence at the group’s third meeting, January 20, 1941, one year after the parent club, and debuted during that year’s Sanfermines.
Why is Peña Oberena called Gaseoseros?
A rival club coined the taunt “¡Oberena! ¡Gaseosa! ¡Se emborracha! ¡Con sifón!” to mock the peña’s Catholic Action roots and its supposedly teetotal image. Oberena’s members sang the insult back with a flipped, self-mocking ending instead of rejecting it, and the nickname Gaseoseros has stuck ever since.
What are Peña Oberena’s colors?
Oberena wears the standard red pañuelo and red faja of Sanfermines, with the peña’s own shield on the neckerchief, paired with a green, white, and black blusón.
Where is Peña Oberena’s clubhouse in Pamplona?
Oberena’s clubhouse is at Calle Joaquín Jarauta 82, planta baja, in Pamplona’s Casco Antiguo, a location the peña has held since February 2010 after decades split between several rented spaces around the old quarter.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.