Most coverage of San Fermín’s participating ganaderías treats them as interchangeable: six bulls, a ranch name printed on the daily program, a color of divisa nobody outside the trade actually notices. Fuente Ymbro gets filed the same way, as one more name in the July rotation. That framing skips the one fact a runner actually needs: according to San Fermín’s own encierro record-keeping, Fuente Ymbro has finished 77 percent of its runs through Pamplona’s streets with nobody gored at all, one of the cleanest records of any ganadería that runs regularly in the modern era. At the opposite extreme stands Cebada Gago, the ranch that has gored more Pamplona runners than any other.
That gap matters because the ganadería running that morning shapes the run itself. Speed, how the herd stays together, and how often a run ends in a goring are not random from year to year. They trace back to a specific bloodline, a specific breeding program, and a specific ranch’s history. A runner who knows only the name on the program is missing the information that actually predicts what the street will look like at eight in the morning.
This profile draws on the registry of the Real Unión de Criadores de Toros de Lidia, Spain’s governing body for fighting-bull breeders, San Fermín’s own festival site and its published encierro statistics, and Spanish-language reporting on the ranch’s ownership, cross-checked wherever possible against more than one source. It covers the ranch’s founding, its bloodline, and its record in the actual street run, not the afternoon bullfight.
Founded in 1996, Built Entirely From Purchased Stock
Fuente Ymbro did not start as a bloodline of its own. It started in 1996, when Ricardo Gallardo, a businessman from Córdoba working in the furniture industry, bought cows and stud bulls outright from the Jandilla ranch, then owned by Borja Domecq. The herd took its name from the land it grazes: Fuente Ymbro, part of the farm “Los Romerales,” in the municipality of San José del Valle in Cádiz province, roughly half an hour from Jerez de la Frontera.
The ranch’s formal standing came a few years later. It registered with the Real Unión de Criadores de Toros de Lidia, the governing association for Spain’s fighting-bull breeders, with a seniority date of March 17, 2002, and was admitted into the union’s top tier, the so called “first group,” in 2003 after clearing the union’s entry requirements. The union’s own registry lists the ranch’s brand code as UKT, its divisa as green, and its ear mark as a spearhead notch cut into both ears, the identifying details every Fuente Ymbro animal carries.
Within a decade, the ranch’s herd had grown large enough, and successful enough, that other breeders began building their own ganaderías directly from Fuente Ymbro or Jandilla stock. El Parralejo and Hermanos Sánchez de León both trace to 2007 offshoots, and a ranch called Ave María, founded in France in 2015 by Philippe Pagés and Robert Margé, did the same. A ranch founded from purchased stock less than thirty years ago has since become a source herd in its own right.
A Domecq Bloodline, Three Generations Removed From Its Founders
Because Gallardo bought both cows and stud bulls directly from Jandilla, Fuente Ymbro’s cattle carry Jandilla’s own bloodline rather than a diluted or crossed version of it. That line traces back further still: Jandilla descends from the ranch Juan Pedro Domecq y Núñez de Villavicencio founded in 1930, built from stock acquired from the Marqués de Tamarón and the Conde de la Corte, both breeders working the Parladé and Vistahermosa bloodlines that sit near the root of the modern Spanish fighting bull. Fuente Ymbro’s animals are, in effect, three ownership changes removed from cattle whose own lineage runs back nearly a century.
Spain’s government breed standard for the fighting bull, set out in a 2001 royal decree, describes the physical type this bloodline produces: a moderately built animal, short bodied with a straight or slightly convex profile, fine skinned, carrying well proportioned horns of medium development on a long neck, with a moderately developed dewlap and a back line that runs straight or slightly saddled. Coats run black, red, chestnut, and tan, with occasional soap colored or sheeted animals attributed to older Vazqueña influence further back in the pedigree. None of this is unique to Fuente Ymbro. It is the shared physical signature of the entire Domecq family of bloodlines, and it is why Fuente Ymbro’s cattle look, in the ring and in the street, recognizably related to Jandilla’s. Build and bloodline are also a real part of how a bull moves and behaves once it is loose on the route, not just how it looks standing still.
The Number That Actually Matters to a Runner: 77 Percent Clean
Here is the fact that gets lost when a ganadería is treated as interchangeable. San Fermín’s own published encierro statistics, posted on the festival’s site after every run, show that Fuente Ymbro has run in Pamplona’s streets eighteen times, with five total gorings recorded across those runs, an average of just over a quarter of a goring per encierro. Fourteen of those eighteen runs, 77 percent, finished with no one gored at all. That is one of the lowest injury rates of any ganadería that has run in Pamplona with any regularity this century.
The ranch is also, by the festival’s own record, fast, and speed itself is one of the biggest variables in how dangerous a given morning turns out to be. San Fermín’s archive pages covering its runs carry titles like “Rapidísimos Fuente Ymbro” from 2018 and “Los Fuente Ymbro, como balas,” meaning “like bullets,” from 2011. Its 2025 run finished in two minutes and thirty seven seconds. A 2018 run, covered by El País, finished in two minutes and fifteen. Fuente Ymbro first ran San Fermín’s actual street encierro on July 13, 2005, completing that debut run in two minutes and thirty four seconds with no gorings, though thirty eight runners were treated for contusions from falls, a reminder that a clean run and an uneventful one are not the same thing. The ranch has run in nearly every edition since, missing only 2019 among the years it could have run.
Fuente Ymbro opens the 2026 San Fermín festival. It is scheduled to run the first encierro of the year on Tuesday, July 7, at eight in the morning from the Cuesta de Santo Domingo, the same opening slot it held in 2025.
The Ranch Right Now: An Owner Winding Down, and a New Herd Carrying the Bloodline Forward
Fuente Ymbro’s story is not finished, and 2025 brought a real change to it. Ricardo Gallardo, now in his seventies after roughly three decades as a breeder, has said publicly that he intends to wind the ganadería down over the coming years rather than hand it to his daughter. As part of that transition, he sold around thirty cows, their offspring, and a stud bull to Juan José Vera, an Aragonese businessman building a new ranch, El Tamaral, on more than six hundred hectares in the same municipality, San José del Valle. Vera has kept the Fuente Ymbro genetics in their original line, without crossing in outside stock, alongside a separate stud bull from Los Romerales.
That means the Fuente Ymbro bloodline is no longer contained inside a single ranch. It is currently splitting into two: the original herd, still running Pamplona’s streets under Gallardo’s ownership for now, and a second, newer herd carrying the same genetics forward under a different name and a different owner thirty minutes down the road. For a bloodline with a safety record this specific in Pamplona, that split is worth watching. It is not yet clear how long the Fuente Ymbro name itself will keep appearing on the San Fermín program.
Frequently Asked Questions
What ganadería is Fuente Ymbro?
Fuente Ymbro is a Spanish fighting bull ranch founded in 1996 in San José del Valle, Cádiz province, built from cattle purchased directly from the Jandilla ranch. It runs a green divisa and is registered with the Real Unión de Criadores de Toros de Lidia, Spain’s governing association for bull breeders.
Is Fuente Ymbro a safe ganadería to run with in Pamplona?
No ganadería running the encierro is safe in an absolute sense, and Encierro does not frame any run that way. What can be said factually is that San Fermín’s own published statistics show Fuente Ymbro finishing 77 percent of its eighteen recorded Pamplona runs with no one gored, one of the lowest injury rates of any regularly participating ganadería this century.
When does Fuente Ymbro run at San Fermín 2026?
Fuente Ymbro is scheduled to run the opening encierro of the 2026 San Fermín festival on Tuesday, July 7, at eight in the morning, starting from the Cuesta de Santo Domingo.
What bloodline is Fuente Ymbro’s cattle?
Fuente Ymbro’s cattle descend from the Jandilla line, which in turn descends from the ranch Juan Pedro Domecq y Núñez de Villavicencio founded in 1930 using stock from the Marqués de Tamarón and the Conde de la Corte, both rooted in the Parladé and Vistahermosa bloodlines.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.