Ask anyone who follows Spanish bullfighting to name one ganadería and most will say Ganadería Miura. The name carries more weight in the taurine world than any other, built on a reputation for producing the most feared bulls in the ring. What almost nobody outside Pamplona knows is that Miura’s most extreme entries in the record books have nothing to do with a bullring at all. They happened on the street, during the encierro, and they sit at opposite ends of the same list: the single longest bull run in San Fermín history, and one of the fastest ever recorded.
That gap matters because it separates two different things people mean when they call Miura “legendary.” One is a reputation earned somewhere this site does not cover. The other is a documented, verifiable running record on the exact streets Encierro’s runners train on every July, and that record is worth understanding on its own terms.
This profile draws on the Universidad de Sevilla’s 2018 academic study of the Miura family’s land holdings, the breed encyclopedia of taurine veterinary researcher Julián Tomás García Sánchez, the ranch’s registry entry with the Unión de Criadores de Toros de Lidia, the San Fermín festival’s own reporting on the ranch’s Pamplona running record, and Spanish press coverage of its confirmed place on the 2026 program. It covers the land, the ownership chain, the bloodline, and the street record. It does not cover the bullring.
A Ranch Nobody Can Quite Agree on a Founding Date For
The Miura family’s documented land holdings around Lora del Río, Sevilla, date to 1842, the starting point used in the Universidad de Sevilla’s own institutional study of the family’s agrarian history. But the herd that actually carries the Miura name and reputation today has a more specific origin point. In 1852, founder Juan Miura bought the pastures and cattle, 193 cows, 70 oxen, and 104 mares, of a Cabrera bloodline herd then held by Ildefonso Núñez de Prado y Góngora de Armenta. Spanish sources treat that 1852 purchase as where the ganadería’s own proper history begins, since it is the moment the herd that would become “Miura” actually formed. Two years later, in 1854, Juan Miura added a shipment of Vistahermosa line cattle bought from José Arias Saavedra.
A separate strand of stock, roughly 220 cows bought from Antonio Gil de Herrera and 200 more cows and studs from José Luis de Albareda, both of Gallardo origin, was folded into the herd around the same period. Some English language accounts date this specific cross to 1842, which likely explains why “founded in 1842” has become the shorthand version of Miura’s history, even though the ranch’s own formative purchase came a decade later. The honest answer is that Miura’s origin is not one clean date. It is a sequence of land and cattle acquisitions across the 1840s and 1850s, and different sources reasonably pick different moments from that sequence to call the beginning.
Ownership has stayed inside one family for six generations since. Juan Miura died in 1855, and the ranch passed to his widow, Josefa Fernández, and son Antonio Miura Fernández. Antonio’s brother Eduardo Miura Fernández took over in 1893. Eduardo’s sons Antonio and José Miura Hontoria inherited the ranch in 1917. Antonio Miura Hontoria’s son, also named Eduardo Miura, ran the operation from 1940 to 1996, when he handed it to his own sons, Antonio and Eduardo Miura Martínez, who run it today. The brand was formally simplified to the single name “Miura” in 2002, after generations of being announced under longer family variations.
The Land and the Bloodline
The herd grazes the Zahariche estate near Lora del Río, more than 600 hectares of open Sevillian countryside where several hundred bulls, oxen, cows, and calves live year round under traditional, largely unmanaged conditions. It is a serious operating ranch, not a museum piece, and the scale of the land is part of what has let the family maintain a closed, consistent bloodline across nearly two centuries.
That bloodline is registered as its own distinct encaste with the Unión de Criadores de Toros de Lidia, Spain’s governing association for fighting-bull breeders, the formal genetic classification Spanish breeders use to group fighting-bull lines. Most ganaderías are classified under someone else’s encaste. Miura is one of the smaller number of ranches whose herd is considered genetically singular enough to carry its own name in the registry. Its roots trace to five historic Spanish bloodlines, Gallardo, Cabrera, Navarra, Veragua, and Vistahermosa-Parladé, blended through more than a century of the family’s own selective breeding rather than through outside crosses.
Physically, the breed standard is distinctive even among fighting bulls. Miura animals tend to be tall at the withers, long bodied, and raised well off the ground, what Spanish breeders call “agalgado,” greyhound like. They run bony framed with high set legs, fine skin, and often a paler face than other lines. Coat color varies more than in most single-ranch herds, running through roan grey, red, chestnut, and black, among others. Horns are broad and thick rather than the finer “astifino” type. Encierro.com’s own prior reporting on the 2026 San Fermín ganadería lineup puts typical Miura weight between 560 and 620 kilograms, near the upper end of what runs through Pamplona’s streets in a given year.
The Street Record: A Run of 30 Minutes, and a Run of Just Over Two
Ganadería Miura history in Pamplona is, on its own, one of the longest of any ranch. Miura is one of the most frequent participants in the Pamplona encierro of any ganadería, with an appearance count in the high fifties as of the mid-2020s, more than any other regular San Fermín ranch. Two mornings from that long history stand apart from every other encierro on record, and both belong to Miura.
The first happened on July 12, 1958. A Miura bull fell behind the rest of the herd during the run, the exact scenario Encierro’s own runners train to recognize as a suelto, a bull that has separated from the group, and handlers needed a shepherd dog to move the lagging animal into the corrals. The resulting encierro stretched to roughly 30 minutes from start to finish, by a wide margin the longest bull run in San Fermín’s documented history. A typical Pamplona encierro covers its 875 meter course in under three minutes.
The second happened decades later, on July 14, 2015. That morning’s run, entirely Miura bulls, covered the same course in 2 minutes and 5 seconds, the fastest encierro recorded since timing records began in 1980, six seconds quicker than the next fastest run on record. Despite the speed, the 2015 run caused only bruising and contusion injuries, no gorings, according to the festival’s own reporting. Miura had already appeared once before on that same top-ten fastest list, with a 2 minute 13 second run on July 9, 2006.
Miura’s Pamplona schedule shifts from year to year along with the rest of the San Fermín lineup, detailed in Encierro’s own rundown of the eight bull ranches selected for San Fermín 2026. For 2026, the ranch ran on July 13, breaking its own long pattern of frequently closing the festival on July 14, a slot that instead went to Jandilla this year.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was Ganadería Miura founded?
There is no single agreed date. The Miura family’s documented land holdings near Lora del Río, Sevilla, date to 1842, but the herd that actually forms today’s ganadería traces to 1852, when founder Juan Miura bought the pastures and cattle of a Cabrera bloodline herd from Ildefonso Núñez de Prado. Both dates appear in reliable sources depending on what is being measured, the family’s land history or the herd’s own formation.
Where is the Miura ranch located?
The ranch is based at the Zahariche estate near Lora del Río, in the province of Sevilla, more than 600 hectares of open countryside where the herd has grazed for generations.
What bloodline do Miura bulls carry?
Miura breeds its own distinct encaste, one of a small number of Spanish fighting-bull lines genetically singular enough to be registered under its own name rather than a related ranch’s classification. Its roots combine five historic bloodlines: Gallardo, Cabrera, Navarra, Veragua, and Vistahermosa-Parladé.
Has Miura run the Pamplona encierro?
Yes, regularly, with one of the highest appearance counts of any San Fermín ganadería. Miura holds both extremes of the San Fermín running record: the longest encierro ever recorded, roughly 30 minutes on July 12, 1958, after a bull lagged behind the herd, and one of the fastest, 2 minutes 5 seconds on July 14, 2015.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.