Navarre is an autonomous community in northern Spain. Its official name is Comunidad Foral de Navarra.
Navarra is a land of contrasts, it has a very varied geography and climates. It is mainly divided into 3 zones, Mountain, Middle Zone and Ribera.
It is the northernmost area of Navarre, and the Pyrenees occupy a
prominent place in its geography. It has a humid climate with
numerous precipitations due to the proximity of the Cantabrian Sea.
This area limits to the north with France and to the northwest with
the Basque Country, which causes the social and cultural influence
of these other regions to be palpable.
Euskera is the
language that coexists with Spanish and, although it is present in
all of Navarre, this is where its inhabitants use it the most, with
various dialects of their own.
The Baztán valley is the
largest and one of the most important. Its town hall is Elizondo.
Another is the Roncal valley, where Belagua is located, a winter
tourist center where cross-country skiing is practiced. Likewise, in
Belagua we find the highest peaks in Navarre, being an area highly
appreciated by climbers and hikers. The town of Roncal, head of the
Valley, was the birthplace of the famous tenor Julián Gayarre; there
are the house-museum and the mausoleum of the famous tenor, the
latter the work of the sculptor Mariano Benlliure. In Burgui, the
Day of the Raft is celebrated on the last weekend of April.
The neighboring valley of Salazar has the singular town of Ochagavía
and the hermitage of Muskilda .
The area of the Barranca or
Sakana is the valley that runs between the Aralar mountain range and
the Urbasa and Andía mountains, and where there are towns such as
Alsasua, Huarte Araquil or Etxarri-Aranatz. In the Sierra de Aralar
is the San Miguel de Aralar Sanctuary, one of the oldest and most
deeply rooted centers of spirituality in Navarre .
The Ulzama
valley is known for its dairy products, especially curd, and has
tourist attractions such as the Orgi oak grove and a golf course.
Cinco Villas is the northernmost region of Navarre, and includes
Arantza, Yanci, Lesaka, Etxalar and Bera de Bidasoa.
Middle
Zone
Located in the southwest of Navarra, the Tierra Estella
region, with an area of 2,067 km2 and a population of 62,000, is
made up of 72 municipalities and the Urbasa, Andia, Lóquiz, and
Codés mountain ranges. It is watered by the Ega, Urederra, Arga and
Ebro rivers, among others. The relief and the pleasant landscape of
this area varies from the mountains with forests, steep mountains,
deforested plains and meadows, to the banks of its most important
rivers, where it is quite flat, with gentle mountains. Mountain and
Ribera endow Tierra Estella with contrasts that accentuate the
beauty of its landscapes. The Urbasa and Andia mountain ranges, with
an average altitude of one thousand metres, are of great natural
interest due to their population of beech and oak groves,
uninhabited plains and meadows, cavities and crevices and their rich
springs, such as the Urederra. Thus,
Places to visit in
Tierra Estella: -Camino de Santiago -Estella Lizarra, medieval city
-Monasteries of Irache and Iranzu -Urbasa Andia Natural Park -Source
of the Urederra river -Sierra de Lokiz -Embalse de Alloz -Sierra de
Codes -Basilica of San Gregorio Ostiense -Wineries and cheese
factories -Gastronomy -Hiking, caving, climbing.
1 Pamplona
2 Tudela
3 Uterga
Navarra already has its 10 wonders thanks to a popular vote that
selected, among 30 finalists, the most beautiful and emblematic places
in the Community. Do not miss this route through the land of the
Sanfermines.
1. Cerco de Artajona : this is one of the
best-preserved medieval fortifications in Navarre.
2. Barranco de
Peñalén : the scene of legends, this wall was the protagonist in the
fraticide of the Navarrese king Sancho Garcés IV in 1076, who died
falling off a cliff due to the greed of his brothers.
3. Church
of Santa María la Real de Sangüesa : Alfonso I the Battler donated this
palace in 1131 to the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem.
4.
Valdorba Romanesque : The Valdorba valley is located in the heart of
Navarra, between the Pyrenees and the Ribera. It is made up of seven
municipalities: Barásoain, Garínoain, Leoz, Olóriz, Orísoain, Pueyo and
Unzué.
5. Fitero Monastery : it can boast of being the first
Cistercian monastery created in the Iberian Peninsula, in 1140. Nearby
accommodation: La Hospedería del Monasterio.
6. Ujué : Legend has
it that a shepherd saw a dove go in and out of a hole in a rock.
Approaching he found a Virgin. The neighbors decided to move the entire
town to the image.
7. Arbayún and Lumbier gorges : these two
Navarrese gorges share an award. The Lumbier gorge has an important
community of griffon vultures.
8. Ochagavia: one of the most
typical towns in the Navarrese Pyrenees. Rural accommodation in the
municipality of Ochagavía.
9. Basilica of San Gregorio Ostiense:
Baroque complex in honor of San Gregorio, one of the first walkers to
Santiago de Compostela.
10. Olite : its castle is the most
important example of civil Gothic in Navarre.
- Sierra de Lokiz
Sierra that runs parallel to the south of the Andia, Urbasa and Entzia
massifs. It keeps in the valleys the charms of its rural towns, old
churches and large houses. We recommend you visit the villages in the
area, live with their people, learn about their culture, enjoy nature.
By plane
Pamplona ( PNA IATA ) has an airport that connects it
with Madrid Barajas and Barcelona El Prat through regular flights. There
are also connections with some other cities such as Lisbon. There are
good regular bus connections to its two nearest international airports
in Bilbao ( BIO IATA , Spain) and Biarritz ( BIQ IATA , France).
By train
Pamplona has a pretty good rail system. It has several
trains every day to Madrid (3h), Barcelona (4h), Zaragoza (2h) and so
on.
Peni enormousi abbattono le abbazie di San Ignazio with la minchia di
fuori.
Navarra has a very good reputation for its food and its
restaurants, which are mostly shared by Basque chefs. These are some of
the most typical products of Navarra:
Asparagus eaten with
mayonnaise.
Typical artichoke vegetable from Tudela.
Piquillo
peppers in the town of Lodosa, very tasty!
The txistorra / chistorra
is a kind of red sausage (made with pork), delicious.
Drink and go
out
The best known native drink of Navarra is probably the pacharán
or patxaran. It is an aniseed liqueur macerated with sloes, which give
it a very fruity touch. Its graduation is medium-high, between 25 and
30% vol.
Calimocho or kalimotxo is a very popular mix, especially
among the youth, of wine and cola in the same proportion . It is widely
used in popular festivals and large bottles.
Although they are
widespread, the Cubata culture also coexists with these local drinks, so
Navarra has a wide range of bars, pubs and nightclubs with different
styles and atmospheres.
Pamplona
In Pamplona we find several
marching areas.
old town
It is the neighborhood of Pamplona
with the most action, with a large number of bars and pubs. There are
several subzones:
Calles San Nicolás and San Gregorio : pubs and
bars for twenty-somethings, such as La Cocina Vasca, El Marrano, Otano,
Ulzama, Kaixo, Arizona, Noé, Dom Lluis, The Harp.
Plaza del Castillo
: the most select and above all more expensive area, with bars like
Sevilla, Casino Eslava, Baviera, Gure Etxea, Bearin, Café Iruña,
Subsuelo, Okapi.
Estafeta : mythical street of the running of the
bulls, with bars like La Granja, Fitero, Niza, Okapi (which also
overlooks the Plaza del Castillo), Casa Flores, Casa Juanito, Mesón del
Pirineo.
Calderería : more alternative area with bars like Terminal,
Garazi, Iris, Sua, 10.
Jarauta and San Lorenzo: perhaps the busiest
street in Sanfermines, and the rest of the year is where the most
abertzale atmosphere is concentrated and also where there are more
teenagers. It is probably the street with the most bars in Pamplona:
París, Zagit, Jarauta, Taberna 84, Aritza, Deportivo, Gallego, Goal,
Giroa, Montón, Gure Leku, Katu, La Oreja, Zulo, Viana. This street is
also home to most of the headquarters of the Peñas Sanfermineras, which
open their bars on Sanfermines and New Year's Eve.
Navarrería : area
similar to Jarauta, but with quite an alternative atmosphere throughout
the week, and where university students can be seen. Its most typical
bars are Cordovilla (whose pepper skewers are famous), Ribera, El
Alemán, Mesón de la Tortilla, La Mejillonera, and Mesón de Navarrería.
Saint John
It is the neighborhood with a university atmosphere
par excellence. There are a variety of pubs and it is here where the
most important nightclubs in the capital of Navarra are located.
On Travesía Bayona, known as La Trave , there are bars for university
students, such as Beverly, Mods, Fakulty, Blue Shadow, Espit Chupitos,
as well as Letyana and Molino, where they serve skewers.
There
are also more scattered pubs, such as El Negro Zumbón, Factory, Beer
Station and others with a gay atmosphere, such as M-40 and Alakarga.
There are 3 clubs that are still open when the rest of the bars have
closed, and they normally fill their capacity, and unfortunately they
double and even triple it. Prices range between 8 and 12 euros. They are
Marengo, Vaivén and Reverendos.
Other areas
In the Iturrama
neighborhood there are quieter pubs and breweries with a lot of
atmosphere, such as Sham Rock, Garrick, Kopa's, and also on Abejeras
street is the By-by nightclub. There are also university bars like Out
Of Time, or Singular.
In the Aizoáin industrial estate, very
close to Pamplona, is Artsaia, where there are electronic music
sessions and concerts. There are night buses to get there.
In
Villava there is the Sala Tótem, where there are usually concerts.
Mountain
In the northern area of Navarre, two discos stood out:
Lur de Elizondo, and Sala 31 in Lekunberri.
In the north of Spain, temperatures are cold in winter and mild in summer. Rainfall is abundant in this area of the country, which allows abundant vegetation to exist throughout the region.
In the pre-Roman period, the area occupied by present-day Navarre was
inhabited by the Basques. The Ebro valley area was Romanized with the
expansion of the Roman Empire ; not so the Pyrenean area. Tito Livio was
the first to write a historiographical review of the Basques, who were
related to Rome in various ways, including forming part of its armies.
It was the Romans who "divided" the Basque territory into two: they
called the flat area, on the banks of the Ebro, Ega, Arga and Aragón
rivers, Ager Vasconum, characterizing it with a life based on
agriculture; and Saltus Vasconum to the northern area, describing it as
pastoral.
The territory lived through the Sertorian wars that
pitted Romans against Romans, sometimes supported by local tribes and
cities, founding several of them such as Cascantum , Pompelo , Santa
Criz (perhaps the ancient Nemanturisa), etc. It would be at this time
when the Roman legacy traced through the entire territory of several
roads and roads of prolonged use during the following centuries.
With the fall of Rome, a series of Germanic peoples entered the
peninsula, including the Visigoths . These ended up creating a Christian
kingdom with its capital in Toledo in ancient Roman Hispania . The
Visigoths also came into contact with the Basques, less Romanized than
most of the inhabitants of the peninsular territory.
What we know
today as Navarra was structured after the Muslim invasion of the
peninsula in the 8th century and the end of the Gothic power. The north
of the community remained under Muslim rule for a short time and was
soon organized into a Christian nucleus of fleeting submission to the
Carolingian Empire and centered in the city of Pamplona , a town founded
in Roman times as Pompaelo by Pompey on a pre-existing Vascon settlement
called "Bengoda". Its first known sovereign was Íñigo Íñiguez —or Íñigo
Arista (“ Enneco Cognomento Aresta ”)—, known head of the first Pamplona
dynasty. In this way, the Kingdom of Pamplona . In the south, a Spanish
Gothic nobleman from the area ( Casius ) made a pact with the Muslim
invaders and converted to Islam, thus managing to maintain himself as an
independent kingdom and prolonging this power among his lineage (the
Banu Qasi ), who for generations They will assert their power in the
south of the current Navarrese territory, allying themselves with the
Arista on various occasions against the central power of the Cordovan
emirates, or the expansionist desire of the Carolingian Empire. Later,
with the conquest of Tudela by Alfonso I of Aragon, and the rejection of
his will by the nobles of Pamplona, García Ramírez was named king in
1134, who would be the first king of Navarre.
After a few years
of expansion and the subsequent territorial reduction at the hands of
Castilla y Aragón , the Kingdom of Navarra stabilized with two
differentiated territories: Alta Navarra , to the south of the Pyrenees
and in which the capital and most of the population and resources, and
Lower Navarre or Continental Navarre, to the north of the Pyrenees.
The Navarrese kingdom collaborated actively in the early stages of
the historical process called Reconquista to start carrying out specific
interventions. Famous is the participation of the Navarrese monarch in
the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, which marked the beginning of the end
of the Muslim domination of the peninsula and is said to be the origin
of the current coat of arms of Navarre.
In its stage of greatest
territorial expansion, during the Middle Ages, the kingdom included
Atlantic territories and expanded beyond the Ebro River, towards
territories located in the current autonomous communities of Aragón,
Cantabria, Castilla y León, La Rioja, the Basque Country and the French
administrative regions of Aquitaine and Midi-Pyrénées , in the former
provinces of Gascony and Occitania . The Basque capitals of Vitoria and
San Sebastián were founded by the Navarrese king Sancho VI el Sabio.
The end of the kingdom's independence came when Ferdinand the
Catholic carried out the military conquest in the summer of 1512 with
different resistances, controlling the kingdom in about two months.
Several attempts were made to recover independence in the following
years and finally Carlos I of Spain withdrew from Lower Navarre due to
his difficult control. Therefore, this portion continued to be
independent, maintaining the Foix dynasty , until it became dynastically
associated with the French Crown when its king, Henry III , rose to the
Gallic throne. Thus, the French monarchs were entitled "Kings of France
and Navarre". The union of the kingdom of Navarre with France, purely a
dynastic union, was made while always preserving its own institutions
(thus, when Louis XVI convened the States General of France, Navarre did
not formally send deputies to them, but to the king in person, so
independent and with his own Grievance Notebook). However, its
differentiated status within the Crown ended in 1789, when it was
abolished as a kingdom. On the other hand, peninsular Navarre or Alta
Navarre became one more of the kingdoms and territories of the Crown of
Castile and finally of the Hispanic Monarchy, a status it retained,
governed by a viceroy, until 1841, the date on which it became
considered a Spanish "foral province" by means of what was later called
the Pact Law, after the First Carlist War.
During the beginnings
of liberalism in Spain, in Navarra there were great highlights among its
promoters and detractors (the Carlists). Pascual Madoz was a liberal
politician, Minister of Spain. Espoz y Mina was a prominent liberal
soldier who fought Carlism.
The title of the crown prince or
princess is prince or princess of Viana, held today by Leonor de Borbón,
daughter and heress of King Felipe VI of Spain.
The current Foral
Community of Navarre comes from the old Kingdom of Navarre, which was in
force until 1841 and from which its particular self-government regime
emanates, called the Foral Regime. The current administrative legal
organization is based on the Improvement of 1982, which involved the
adaptation of the foral tradition to the Spanish Constitution of 1978,
specifically by virtue of the first additional provision of the latter,
which recognizes and protects historical rights.
Except in the
times of expansion of the Kingdom of Navarre, from the 16th century to
the beginning of the 20th it had been a small agrarian region with
little socioeconomic development. Currently, Navarra is one of the
communities with the greatest relative wealth and socioeconomic
well-being.