Pamplona is two cities. From 6 to 14 July it holds San Fermin, which Hemingway put in The Sun Also Rises in 1926 and which now draws well over a million people to a city of about 200,000. The rest of the year it is a calm, prosperous Navarrese capital with a star shaped Renaissance citadel, a ring of city walls you can walk, and a large park, and it is the first major stop on the Camino Frances for anyone who crossed the Pyrenees from Saint Jean Pied de Port.
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Which of those two cities you are packing for changes everything. This covers both, and is honest about the festival, which is genuinely dangerous, has a documented problem with sexual assault, and is also one of the great events in Europe.
What Makes Pamplona Different to Pack For
San Fermin has a uniform
White trousers and a white shirt with a red sash at the waist and a red neckerchief. Almost everyone wears it, it is cheap to buy locally, and the whites do not survive: wine is thrown at the opening chupinazo and the clothes are stained permanently by the first hour. Buy locally rather than bringing anything you value.
Navarrese weather is not Mediterranean
Pamplona sits at around 450 metres below the Pyrenees. Summer runs 14°C to 29°C and July is warm but not fierce. Winter runs 1°C to 10°C, wet and grey, with snow possible. Rainfall is spread through the year at around 750 millimetres.
A merino wool base layer for women covers October through April, and for anyone starting the Camino here it is the single most useful garment in the pack.
The Camino starts hard
Walkers arriving have just crossed the Pyrenees, and those leaving climb to the Alto del Perdon on the next stage. This is not flat country.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
The Pamplona Packing List
Footwear
For the city, flat and comfortable; the old town is cobbled and the walls walk is gravel and paving. For San Fermin, closed shoes with grip that you do not mind ruining, because the streets are wet with wine and worse and people fall. For the Camino, proper broken in walking shoes or waterproof hiking shoes, since the stages either side of the city are hilly and frequently wet.
Clothing
Layers and a waterproof for most of the year. For the festival, the white and red, bought locally. Covered shoulders and knees for the cathedral and San Saturnino.
Outside the festival Pamplona dresses neatly and conservatively, and the pintxos circuit along Calle Estafeta and San Nicolas in the evening is a dressed occasion in a low key way.
For the festival specifically
Nothing you value, including the bag. A cross body bag worn in front and closed. Earplugs, because the noise runs until dawn and accommodation is in the middle of it. A phone charger and a power bank; the networks struggle with the crowd density.
Book accommodation months ahead, expect prices to multiply several times over, and know that many people stay in Pamplona only for the day and sleep elsewhere.
For the rest of the year
A packable rain jacket. A wide brim sun hat for the citadel park in summer and for Camino stages, which are exposed.
Practical
Cash for the smaller bars. A pilgrim credential if you are walking. Note that the Camino albergues in Pamplona fill early in summer.
What to Wear at Key Sites
San Fermin
The encierro, the bull run, takes place each morning at eight along an 875 metre route to the bullring and lasts a couple of minutes. Fifteen people have been killed in the run since records began in 1910 and dozens are injured each year, mostly by falls and crushing rather than by horns.
Practically: you do not have to run, and the overwhelming majority of visitors watch. If you do run, it is free, you must be over eighteen and sober, you must not carry a bag or camera, and the rules are enforced by police who will pull people out. Watching from a balcony is paid and safe; watching from behind the barriers is free and crowded. The rest of the festival is processions, music, fireworks and enormous amounts of drinking.
The citadel and the walls
A sixteenth century star fort, one of the best preserved Renaissance military structures in Europe, now a park with galleries in the bastions. The medieval walls run around the north of the old town with a walkway and views down to the river.
Practically: flat, green and quiet, and the best thing in the city outside the festival. Free.
The cathedral and the old town
A Gothic cathedral behind a neoclassical facade, with a large cloister that is among the finest in Spain, and the tomb of Charles III of Navarre. The Occidens exhibition inside covers the building's archaeology.
Practically: covered shoulders and knees. The cloister is the reason to pay. Cold inside.
The pintxos
Calle Estafeta, San Nicolas and Calle Mayor hold the bars. Navarrese pintxos are closer to San Sebastian's than to the free tapa of Leon: you pay per piece and they are elaborate.
Practically: from around eight in the evening. Standing, moving between bars, one or two per stop. Excellent and not cheap.
Out of town
The Alto del Perdon with its iron pilgrim sculptures is the next Camino stage. Olite has a fairy tale royal palace, the Bardenas Reales is a semi desert of eroded badlands an hour south, and the Pyrenean valleys of Roncesvalles and Baztan run north.
What Not to Bring
Leave anything you value to the festival, clothing included. Leave a camera or a bag if you intend to run, which is prohibited and dangerous.
Leave the assumption that northern Spain is warm and dry. Leave an unbooked bed in the first week of July.
Essential Resources for Women in Pamplona
Emergency numbers in Spain: 112 is the single emergency number and handles police, ambulance and fire, with English speaking operators. The national police are on 091 and the local police on 092. During San Fermin the city runs a greatly expanded medical and police presence with posts along the encierro route.
Tourist support: Spain has a dedicated service for foreign visitors reporting crime, the SATE, and the national police station in Pamplona takes reports from visitors. During the festival there are dedicated points for reporting sexual assault, staffed and signposted, set up after the events described below.
US Embassy and consulate: the embassy is in Madrid at Calle de Serrano 75, telephone +34 91 587 2200, at es.usembassy.gov, around four hours away. Enrol in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program at step.state.gov before you travel.
Main hospital or clinic: the Complejo Hospitalario de Navarra has a 24 hour urgencias department, and the Clinica Universidad de Navarra is a major private hospital. Trauma provision here is excellent, for reasons related to the festival. EU visitors should carry the European Health Insurance Card; everyone else needs travel insurance, and note that injuries sustained running with bulls may be excluded by your policy.
Official health authority: the Spanish Ministry of Health at sanidad.gob.es.
US State Department travel advisory for Spain: current advisory level and detail. Read it directly rather than relying on this page.
UK FCDO travel advice for Spain: entry requirements, safety and health guidance, which carries specific advice on San Fermin.
Official tourism authority: Turespana at spain.info, with the Navarre regional board at turismo.navarra.es and the city's own San Fermin site for the programme, the balcony bookings and the encierro rules.
Solo women safety assessment: outside the festival, Pamplona is one of the safest and most comfortable cities in Spain for a woman travelling alone. It is prosperous and orderly, the old town is compact and well lit, the pintxos circuit is busy and sociable, eating alone is normal, and crime rates are low. Pilgrims arrive and leave constantly, so a woman with a rucksack is unremarkable. That is fifty one weeks of the year. San Fermin requires a different answer and it should be given plainly. The festival has a documented problem with sexual assault and harassment. The 2016 gang rape of an eighteen year old at the festival, and the 2018 verdict in that case that initially convicted the five men of the lesser offence of abuse rather than rape, triggered mass protests across Spain and led directly to the reform of Spanish sexual consent law in 2022. The city now runs an explicit anti assault campaign, staffed reporting points, and a much larger police presence, and reported incidents have fallen, but the combination of enormous crowds, very heavy drinking and round the clock street partying remains high risk. If you go: stay with people you know and agree in advance not to separate, keep your drink with you, do not accept drinks from strangers, know where the reporting points are, and be realistic about how much you are drinking in a crowd of that density. Beyond that, the crush itself injures people, the encierro route is genuinely dangerous, and falls on wet streets are constant.
Reading On
Pamplona is worth visiting in May or September, when the city is itself, as much as in July when it is not. The Spain travel guide for women is the parent for the whole country and covers the regions, the seasons and the trains, and the Spain packing list for women covers a multi region trip. On the route, the Camino de Santiago travel guide for women covers the walk, with the Leon packing list for women and the Santiago de Compostela packing list for women further west. North and east, the San Sebastian travel guide for women and the Bilbao packing list for women cover the Basque coast, and the Oviedo packing list for women covers Asturias west. South, the Madrid travel guide for women and the Segovia packing list for women reach the centre. The travel packing guide for women is the parent for all destinations. For why merino is the right base layer for a wet Navarrese spring and for the first hard stages of the Camino, the best merino wool base layers for women explains the fibre, and the Roman Trail collection is where the tops themselves live.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
