The history of Pamplona as a city goes back to the 1st millennium B.C. when a settlement of Vascones named Iruña existed. However, traces of human occupation of the area date back 75,000 years. In the Roman era, the Vascones settlement was converted into a Roman city by General Pompey, who began by setting up a military camp there in 74 B.C., which he named Pompelo.
The Romans were followed by the Visigoths, the Muslims of Al-Andalus, and, briefly and intermittently between 778 and 816, the Carolingians. In the early 9th century, the Kingdom of Navarre was founded, an autonomous Christian principality vassal of the Caliphate of Cordoba. The Kingdom of Navarre became a fully independent kingdom in 905 and, under the reign of Sancho III of Pamplona, became the most powerful Christian state on the Iberian Peninsula in the 11th century. In 1164 the name "Kingdom of Navarre" was definitively abandoned and renamed the Kingdom of Navarre, a name that had been used before.
The wars with neighboring states, frequent especially in the 10th and 11th centuries, were added to the internal conflicts in Pamplona, more serious in the 13th century, but which would only end in 1423 (Privilege of the Union). Until this year, Pamplona was not exactly a single city but a set of autonomous boroughs that were separated by walls to protect themselves from the wars that broke out between them. In 1276 one of the boroughs was destroyed, and its population massacred.
In the second half of the 15th century, Pamplona found itself involved in the Navarrese Civil War, a long-running dispute between successive claimants to the throne of Navarre. The civil war would eventually herald the annexation of Navarre by the newly united kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, which formally occurred on 7 July 1515, three years after Pamplona's surrender to the invading Castilian troops.
After the French Revolution, during the War of the Pyrenees, Pamplona was besieged by French forces in 1794, who were unable to enter the city. Between 1808 and 1813 the city was occupied by Napoleon Bonaparte's troops. The city was involved in the Carlist Wars that marked the 19th century and was the stage for a popular movement in defense of the fueros (forals) that became known as the "Gamazada".
Despite the victory of the Republicans and leftists in the municipal elections that led to the Second Spanish Republic, Pamplona was controlled by the Francoist forces from the first day of the civil war, which did not save it from facing hundreds of shootings of Republicans, which continued beyond the end of the war. During Francoism, the city was transformed from a rural town with only craft industries to an industrial city, and its population more than tripled. Because of the region's loyalty to the Francoist cause during the war, Navarre was the only historic Spanish region to retain its autonomy during Francoism, but at the same time, it was one of the areas with the most trade union conflict in all of Spain, having been the site of several strikes, the first of which was in 1951.
The transition from Francoism to democracy was felt intensely in Pamplona. In this period riots in the streets of Pamplona were frequent, some of them quite violent. Although during the first phase of the transition there were no attacks by the Basque terrorist and separatist movement ETA, the same did not happen in the following phases, and Pamplona witnessed several terrorist attacks.
From Prehistory to the Roman Era
The conditions of the Pamplona basin (cuenca) have favored human settlement since ancient times. The finds of lithic industry (stone tools) in the lands bordering the Arga River show that human occupation in what is now the city dates back 75,000 years. During excavations in Castle Square, a menhir was found that could not be dated.
In the first millennium B.C., there was a settlement of Vascones where the city is today, which was called Iruña. Pamplona is also identified as the capital of the Vascones, which is referred to in historical documents as Bengoda. The Basque territory minted its coins, on the back side of which appeared the legend Bascunes or Barscunes, and on the front side, although not always, the legend Bengoda, which according to historian and numismatist Antonio Beltrán Martínez corresponded to the mint and capital of the Basques. Chronologically the coins could be from the second half of the 2nd or 1st century BC.
The Basque name Iruña may originate from the term hiri (town or village). The villages with hiri in their name were founded for strategic or commercial reasons and ended up being regional reference centers, so they were "the city" for the local people. According to others, the name Iruña may be related to the river Runa, now called Arga.
In the Roman era, the village of Iruñea became a city with the foundation of "Pompelo" by the Roman general Pompey in the year 74 B.C., who established there a military camp that in time would become the city of Pamplona. Pompelo, named after its founder, was nothing more than a small civitas built by legionaries, where the Vascones of the ancient village settled. The defense of the city was relatively simple, being located at some altitude and protected by the Arga River, walling one of the flanks sufficed. In almost all areas near the river, some woods or bushes ensured the livelihood of livestock, wood supply, and fruit. The part closest to the walls contained the buildings, with the forum in the center and a street leading to the wall, where a door opened towards the area of the Ebro Valley. The agricultural fields were located outside the city and next to the river. There may have been a vassal-like relationship between Pompey and some Vascone chief, possibly before the foundation of the Roman city, namely because it is known that Roman citizenship was granted to nine people from the Vascone city of Ejea by Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, Pompey's father, in the year 90 BC, in reward for the support in the Battle of Asculum, in Picenum, during the Social War. Later the city acquires greater importance, as Strabo mentions:
According to the latest archaeological discoveries in Castle Square, in the middle of the current city center, Roman Pompelon had baths, the largest in northern Spain according to some scholars, which gives the city a higher category than it had traditionally been considered. The findings in the castle square in the early 2000s were destroyed, despite public protests by citizens, which even led to two police officers being injured in June 2002. Against the opinion of several archaeologists, including the eight involved in the excavations, most of the archaeological remains found were dismantled, with only a wall and the remains of the castle ordered built by Ferdinand the Catholic remaining.
Middle Ages
Visigoths, Carolingians and Muslims In the 4th century, the Romans are replaced by the Visigoths in dominating the region. Unlike the Romans, the Visigoths did not have good relations with the Vascones. Pamplona was the diocese of the Visigothic Church and, judging by the Necropolis found, Visigoths lived there, although the bad relationship with the Vascones generated some controversy about their presence in the city. Muslims were present in the 8th and 9th centuries.
Muslim rule was briefly threatened by Charlemagne, who sent expeditions to the region in the late 8th century to extend the Marca Hispanica (or Hispanic March) to the north. The Carolingians achieved nothing more than the creation of a county in the western part of the Pyrenees, which lasted only ten years. The legendary Carolingian count Roland is said to have destroyed the walls of Pamplona in 778 to keep the city from rebelling during the failed expedition to conquer Zaragoza from the Muslims, before the Battle of Roncevaux Pass, which took place not far from Pamplona. Jimeno of Pamplona (Motmine Alacra in the Arab chronicles) took the city for the Emirate of Cordoba a few years later (781?). In 806 the Pamplona aristocracy organized against emirate rule and integrated the region into the Carolingian Empire of Louis the Pious. This Navarrese Marca Hispanica was a county of four or five thousand square kilometers that must have had no more than one count, Velasco al-Yalasqí. it was short-lived since in 816 all the Marches in the western part of the northern Pyrenees were extinguished.
Kingdom of Navarre vassal of the emirate The Kingdom of Pamplona, the predecessor of the future Kingdom of Navarre, which would only be formally established centuries later, appeared in the 810s, and the first king of Pamplona is considered to have been Íñigo Arista, grandson of Jimeno. Although enjoying relative independence and being officially Christian, the Kingdom of Navarre was a vassal state of the Emirate of Cordoba and was founded with the support of the powerful muladi family of the Banu Qasi, lords of Ribera Navarre, the southernmost part of Navarre. The Arab chronicles refer to the first "kings" of Pamplona as "lord, count, or prince of the Vascones," (bashkunish) which means they were not recognized as kings, given the smallness of the territory and the fact that it had only one ecclesiastical district. Submission to the emirate was ensured by sporadic punitive expeditions that did not aim at permanent occupation. The initial territory of the Kingdom of Navarro was approximately 5,000 km2 and had as its borders the peaks of the western Pyrenees and the outer Pamplona mountains.Excerpts based on the article "Reino de Pamplona" in the Spanish-language Wikipedia (specifically the version as of March 14, 2011).
In 824, after quelling the revolts of the Gascony nobility, the Carolingians sent troops and two counts to Pamplona to restore Carolingian sovereignty. On their return from the mission, they were surprised and captured in the Pyrenees by "perfidious Montagnards" Vascones, in what is considered the "second battle of Roncevaux Pass". Count Eblo was sent to Córdoba as a trophy and Count Aznar was set free because he was Gascon and therefore considered consanguineous. Íñigo Arista's son, Garcia Íñiguez (851-882), and grandson, Fortunio Garcés (882-905) maintained the territory of the Pamplonian kingdom and made no conquests.
Kingdom of Independent Pamplona In 905, Sancho Garcés III, son of Dadilda de Pallars, brother of Raymond I, and García Jimenes, Jimeno's great-great-grandson, overthrew Fortunio Garcés and broke his commitments to Córdoba, founding the Jiménez Dynasty. Sancho I of Navarre (or Pamplona), as he became known, extended the kingdom to San Esteban de Deyo, on the course of the Ega River to the Ebro, and the counties of Nájera and Calahorra, the latter with the support of the King of León Ordoño II of León. These conquests precipitated the decay of the Banu Cassi. The response of the Cordoban emir was fast, and he sent two expeditions to regain control of Navarre. The first of these expeditions won the Battle of Valdejunquera (920) and reoccupied almost all of La Rioja, but did not reach the Cuenca of Pamplona. The second expedition destroyed the city in 924. Despite the setbacks, Sancho's kingdom had about 15,000 km2 after the war with the Muslims, three times as much as when he took power.