Logroño

Right now in Logroño (as of October 2026)

• Municipal albergue under new management: After building work it was closed from mid-April to the end of June 2026. Since 1 July 2026 it has been run by the Spanish federation of Friends of the Camino, and it works on a donation basis. Before that, the La Rioja association had looked after it for 33 years; it has lodged an appeal against the new award.
• Parish albergue in winter: According to a post in the pilgrim forum from July 2026, the parish albergue Santiago el Real is to close from November to February. An albergue portal, however, lists it as open all year. Ask beforehand.

How long to stay?

An afternoon is enough. The churches on the Way, Santiago el Real, the Concatedral and San Bartolomé, all lie in the small old town. What makes Logroño special is the evening: that's when the lanes around Calle Laurel fill up. If your feet need a rest day after a good 160 kilometres, a big city with shops, pharmacies and private albergues is not a bad place for it. But you don't need one here.

Logroño in Ninja numbers

• Around 161 kilometres you've covered since Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, according to Camino Ninja. Still 615 to Santiago.
• 198 metres is the length of the Puente de Piedra, the bridge you cross into town. Its predecessor had twelve arches and three defensive towers, which still appear on the city's coat of arms.
• More than 65 bars are packed into a good 200 metres around Calle Laurel (as of October 2026).
• 33 years an association of volunteers ran the municipal albergue, until spring 2026.

Arriving: across the Ebro into the old town

From Viana it's just under 10 kilometres, according to Camino Ninja. On the way you cross from Navarre into La Rioja. Then the Camino Francés takes you over the Puente de Piedra, the stone bridge across the Ebro. For centuries it has been the pilgrims' gateway into the city.

On the other side the old town begins, with both pilgrim albergues: the municipal one on Calle Ruavieja and the parish albergue on Calle Barriocepo at the church of Santiago el Real, right on the Camino. At the bridge there is also a pilgrim information point, which reopened in July 2026.

In brief: a village that got a charter

Logroño was originally a village belonging to the monastery of San Millán. In 1095 King Alfonso the Sixth gave it a town charter, the Fuero de Logroño, and made it a royal town. This charter became the model for many towns in northern Spain. With the pilgrims and with trade, the city on the Ebro grew.

In 1521 French and Navarrese troops besieged Logroño for about a week. The city held out, and every year on 11 June it celebrates this with the feast of San Bernabé. In 1610 a great Inquisition trial took place here, at which, according to tradition, people from the Pyrenean village of Zugarramurdi were burned as witches. Today Logroño, with around 152,000 inhabitants, is the capital of La Rioja, the region that also gives its wine its name.

The river pilgrims waited for

In the twelfth century, the pilgrim guide in the Codex Calixtinus warned: all the rivers between Estella and Logroño are unhealthy for people and animals. Then came the Ebro. Through Logroño, the Codex says, flows a mighty river with healthy water and rich in fish. For the pilgrims of that time it was good news after days of bad water.

Over this river ran a bridge that, according to tradition, was built by San Juan de Ortega, one of the great road builders of the Camino. A chronicler of the city wrote that it was built to make the crossing easier for pilgrims on their way to Santiago. It had twelve arches and three towers. In June 1775 the flood stood over the whole bridge and carried away the first tower, and in 1871 the bridge collapsed. Today's bridge from 1884 has seven arches and is 198 metres long.

You'll see the Ebro more often in Logroño. Along the bank runs a green path of around 15 kilometres with parks, good for an evening stroll without a backpack. And even in Calle Laurel, between the tapas bars, its course has been traced in paving slabs since 2011.

Around Santiago el Real: What to see

The old town is small, and everything lies on the Camino or a few lanes off it. We found no reliable opening hours or admission for any of the churches. If a door is open, go in.

• Iglesia de Santiago el Real: The apostle's church stands right on the Camino, and the parish runs the pilgrim albergue in it. Today's church was built between 1500 and 1527, after a fire destroyed the previous building. At the portal you see James twice: as a pilgrim and as Santiago Matamoros, the Moor-slayer, a figure from 1737. Two images of the same saint on one door, the walker and the warrior. Inside, the altarpiece shows the legendary Battle of Clavijo twice, in which James is said to have appeared to the Christians, plus a Gothic pilgrim figure of the apostle from the fourteenth century.
• Concatedral de Santa María de la Redonda: The church on the Plaza del Mercado was built from 1516 onwards; its two twin towers were added in the eighteenth century. In the ambulatory behind the high altar you can see a small painting of the Crucifixion attributed to Michelangelo. A bishop brought it to Logroño; whether it is really by Michelangelo has not been proven. For you it's the chance to see what may be a Michelangelo, right on the Way.
• Iglesia de San Bartolomé: The church lies on the Camino and was begun in the twelfth century. Its Gothic portal is considered the most important Gothic sculpture in La Rioja. In 19 scenes it tells of the martyrdom of the apostle Bartholomew and the finding of his relics. The brick tower was rebuilt after the siege of 1521.
• Iglesia de Santa María de Palacio: In 1130 King Alfonso the Seventh gave his palace to the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, which founded its first house in Castile here. The order was linked to the tomb of Christ in Jerusalem, the other great pilgrimage destination of the Middle Ages. Look out for the pointed Gothic spire from the thirteenth century.

Food and drink

Logroño's evening plays out in Calle Laurel and the neighbouring lanes, which together are called "Senda de los Elefantes", the path of the elephants. Whoever goes in, so they say, comes out with a trunk and on all fours. In a good 200 metres there are more than 65 bars, and each has one or two specialities: mushrooms, wild mushrooms, skewers, tortilla, pig's ear, patatas bravas. With it you drink Rioja, the wine of the region. The street came into being after the city wall was demolished in 1862. Calle San Juan is part of it too.

Honestly

• The municipal albergue stands on shaky ground. Its management is new, and the previous association is fighting the award. How it will develop in the long term is open. What counts for you: in summer and autumn 2026, pilgrims in the app praise the volunteers and the house.
• The parish albergue is warm-hearted but simple. There's no kitchen, if all beds are taken you sleep on a mat, and at 22:00 the door is shut. If you want to sit in Calle Laurel late into the evening, it's the wrong place for you.
• The churches are often closed. We found reliable opening hours for none of them. Don't plan your visit around one particular church.
• The way out of the city is long. From the centre it's almost six kilometres to the La Grajera reservoir, where you're back in green surroundings.

Where pilgrims sleep

• Albergue de peregrinos de Logroño: the municipal albergue on Calle Ruavieja in the old town. Since 1 July 2026 it has been run by the Spanish federation of Friends of the Camino, and it works on a donativo basis. You're welcomed with lemon water and fruit. Pilgrims in the app praise the volunteers, the kitchen and the hand-washing areas.
• Albergue parroquial Santiago El Real: the parish albergue at the church of Santiago el Real, Calle Barriocepo 8, since 2007. 30 places in bunk beds and on mattresses, donativo. There's a shared dinner and breakfast, and an optional prayer after the meal. No reservations, check-in from 14:00 to 22:00, a credencial is required. Pilgrims in the app tell of cooking and singing together.

There are also several private albergues with dormitories in the old town, mostly between €15 and €25 per night, which can be reserved. Many have curtains on the beds, air conditioning and cotton sheets, which pilgrims in the app praise again and again.

Ninja tips

• Feet in the fountain: At the municipal albergue you may put your feet in the fountain in the courtyard. Several pilgrims rave about it in the app.
• The house speciality: In Calle Laurel every bar has one or two specialities. Order exactly that, drink a glass and move on. That's how the evening works here.
• Donativo doesn't mean free: Both pilgrim albergues live on your donations, and at the parish albergue that includes dinner. If you can, give as much as you would pay in a private albergue.
• Lend a hand: At the parish albergue people cook and wash up together. Pitch in.
• The information point at the bridge: Right at the Puente de Piedra there's an information point for pilgrims. You can get advice there before you head into the old town.
• Relax by the Ebro: If you still feel like it in the afternoon, walk along the Ebro. A green path with parks runs along the bank.

Practical tips for pilgrims

• Curfew: At the parish albergue the doors close at 22:00, and that is strictly enforced.
• Shopping: As a big city, Logroño has everything you need for the next few days. Pilgrims in the app mention supermarkets right next to several private albergues.
• Festival: The San Mateo grape harvest festival takes place every year in the week around 21 September.

Onward: via La Grajera to Nájera

You leave the city on a green path, the Vía Verde, which leads to the La Grajera reservoir. The reservoir was built in 1880 to irrigate the city's gardens and today lies in a large park. After 12.6 kilometres, according to Camino Ninja, you reach Navarrete, the last pottery centre in La Rioja, with a church built from 1553 onwards and a Baroque altarpiece. Via Sotés and Ventosa you continue to Nájera, 29.6 kilometres from Logroño according to Camino Ninja.

What awaits you tomorrow

Just before Navarrete you pass the ruins of the medieval pilgrim hospital of San Juan de Acre. Its Romanesque portal now stands at the cemetery, which you pass on the way to Nájera: a gateway for pilgrims that became a gateway for the dead. In Nájera the monastery of Santa María la Real awaits, consecrated in 1052 by King García Sánchez the Third, who was born and buried here. A cave from the very first building survives, the Cueva de la Virgen.

If the walk to Nájera is too long for you, Navarrete after 12.6 kilometres is a good stopover.

Deep dive: The city on the great river

A long read, in case you want to learn more about Logroño. About twenty-five minutes' reading.

On the bridge

Stop for a moment before you walk into the old town. Beneath you flows the Ebro, the biggest river you cross on the Camino Francés. Ahead of you lies a city of around 152,000 people, the first really big one since Pamplona. And under your feet is a bridge that has only stood here since 1884, at a spot where pilgrims have crossed the river for almost a thousand years.

Logroño is an easy city to underestimate. Many pilgrims know it only as the place with the tapas bars on Calle Laurel. That isn't wrong. But behind the bars lies a story that begins with this river, with a saint who built bridges, with an apostle who rode into a battle that never happened the way it is told, with a small painting that may be by Michelangelo, and with one week in June 1521 when the city held its breath.

And it is a wine city. Under the oldest street in town, the one you are about to walk along, there are still cellars where wine was being made centuries ago. The Way and the wine: those are the two threads that run through Logroño.

A ford and a charter

Even the name tells of the river. The most widely accepted explanation derives Logroño from a Celtic word meaning ford or crossing. Later an article grew onto the front, and Gronio became Logronio. The town charter of 1095 has both: mostly Logronio, and once still illo Gronio, that ford. Another explanation points to a sacred grove of the Berones, the people who lived here before the Romans. All that is certain is that from the very beginning this place had to do with getting across the Ebro.

The Romans had their settlement of Vareia a few kilometres downstream, which has since been absorbed into the city. Logroño itself only appears in the records in the tenth century. In 965, King García Sánchez the First of Pamplona gave it to the monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla. Logroño was then a village that belonged to monks.

That changed in 1095. King Alfonso the Sixth of Castile and León gave the place its own charter, the Fuero de Logroño. He wanted to settle more people at this strategic point, on the border between Castile, Navarre and Aragon, where the pilgrim road crossed the river. The charter allowed locals and foreigners alike to settle. The monastery village became a royal town where crafts and trade grew. The Fuero was so successful that many places in the north adopted it as their model.

This charter also contains the oldest written trace of a bridge over the Ebro: an obligation connected with the head of the bridge of Saint John. And it mentions in passing that El Cid, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, had once attacked the town, in a feud with one of his rivals. Logroño was a place people fought over from early on.

The saint who built bridges

The old bridge bore the name of a man you will meet again on your way: San Juan de Ortega. His monastery lies in the Montes de Oca beyond Belorado, and you will pass it in a few days.

Juan was born around 1080 in Quintanaortuño near Burgos. He was a disciple of Santo Domingo de la Calzada, after whom a town further along the Way is named. Together the two worked on roads meant to make walking easier for pilgrims. When Domingo died in 1109, Juan travelled to Jerusalem. On the way back he was shipwrecked. He prayed to Saint Nicholas of Bari and vowed to build him a chapel if he survived. He survived, and he kept his word. In the Montes de Oca he built a chapel and a shelter. Around 1138 these grew into a monastery, which Pope Innocent the Second placed under his protection.

Tradition credits Juan with more. He is said to have finished the road between Nájera and Burgos that his master had begun, and to have built the first bridges: in Logroño, in Nájera, in Santo Domingo de la Calzada, in Belorado. In 1633 Fernando Albia de Castro, the chronicler of Logroño, wrote in his Memorial of the city that Juan had built the bridge „para facilitar el paso a los peregrinos que iban a Santiago“, to make the crossing easier for the pilgrims on their way to Santiago.

Whether Juan really built this bridge with his own hands cannot be proven. Albia was writing five centuries later. But the name stuck, and on the left bank stood a chapel dedicated to the saint. Juan de Ortega fell ill in Nájera, had himself carried to his monastery and died there on 2 June 1163. Since 1971 he has been the patron saint of Spain's building surveyors. For a man who built bridges for pilgrims, it is a fitting job.

Twelve arches, three towers and a disaster in the river

The bridge Albia de Castro described was a very different structure from today's. It was a good 200 metres long and rested on twelve arches. And it was a fortress. Three towers stood on it. The first stood on the Navarre side, the second in the middle, big enough for up to 40 defenders and housing the pulleys for the chains of a wooden drawbridge, and the third joined the bridge to the city wall. The three towers are still in Logroño's coat of arms today.

The river gnawed at the bridge. From 18 to 21 June 1775 a flood stood over the entire structure, and the first tower collapsed. In the First Carlist War, in 1835, an arch was cut out and replaced with a drawbridge. In 1850 the remains of the towers were taken down. In January 1871 another flood damaged the left-bank side so badly that the last three arches had to be demolished.

Then came the disaster that hardly anyone in Logroño thinks about today. During the building work, people made do with a wooden crossing. In August 1880 it gave way under an artillery section and its horses. The army engineers built a ferry out of two boats and beams. On 1 September 1880 it capsized with soldiers of an infantry regiment on board, because the weight was badly distributed. 90 soldiers died, in panic, at a spot where the water did not even fully close over their heads.

After that, things moved quickly. In 1882 an iron bridge opened alongside, and it is still there today. The same year, the plan of the engineer Fermín Manso de Zúñiga for a complete rebuild of the stone bridge was approved. He gave it only seven arches with wider spans and round piers, so that flood water could flow away more easily. Some of the stones came from the old bridge. It was inaugurated on 11 June 1884, the day of the city's San Bernabé festival. Two piers of the old bridge still stand in the river, and in summer, when the water is low, you can see them. Since 2021 the arches have been lit up in colour on special days.

The apostle's church

Just past the bridge, on Calle Barriocepo, stands the church that matters most to pilgrims in Logroño: Santiago el Real, Saint James the Royal. It is considered the oldest church in the city, and more legends cling to it than to any other.

Two of the city's chroniclers, Albia de Castro among them, believed that James himself had preached in this area and that one of his disciples founded the first church here. None of this is documented. More likely, a crypt from early Christian times stood at the beginning. Beneath the apse there is still a vault with burial niches. Tradition goes on to say that the church was enlarged in 844, the year of the Battle of Clavijo. This Romanesque church burned almost completely in 1500.

What you see today was built right afterwards, in the first decades of the sixteenth century. It is a single space without columns, around 42 metres long and 24 metres high, spanned by a star vault. The tower beside it was built from 1570 and is 40 metres high. In the eighteenth century it was given a brick spire modelled on the towers of La Redonda. It weighed around 300 tonnes, and because it was throwing the tower off balance, it was taken down again in 1902.

Santiago el Real was not only a church. The city council met here until 1572. To the right of the altarpiece there is still an inscription in Roman letters: „Este es el archivo de esta muy noble y muy leal ciudad de Logroño“, this is the archive of this very noble and very loyal city of Logroño. And here, according to Albia de Castro, the citizens gathered for an open council meeting in the emergency of 1521.

Down in the altarpiece sits a Gothic Madonna from the fourteenth century, the Virgen de la Esperanza, the Virgin of Hope. According to tradition, the city entrusted itself to her during the siege of 1521. Since then she has been Logroño's patroness and holds the honorary title of chief mayor. Every year on 11 June she is carried through the city.

Outside, next to the church, you will find a fountain for pilgrims, the Fuente del Peregrino. And on the square in front of it a game of the goose is set into the ground, the Juego de la Oca, with squares that show the Camino. People say the Templars invented the game of the goose and encoded the pilgrim road in it. That is a nice story, nothing more. But the board invites you to walk a few squares after you already have the real kilometres behind you.

Clavijo: a battle that never happened the way it is told

In the altarpiece of Santiago el Real, James rides twice. Once as a rider on his horse, once in the thick of the Battle of Clavijo. To understand this battle, you need to know a story that shaped Spain for centuries.

The legend goes like this. In 844, King Ramiro the First of Asturias refuses to keep paying the Moors a cruel tribute: one hundred young women. Battle is joined near Clavijo, in the hills south of Logroño. The Christians are outnumbered and take refuge in the castle of Clavijo. In the night Ramiro dreams that James will stand by them. The next morning, 23 May 844, the apostle appears on a white horse and leads the Christians to victory. Out of gratitude, the legend continues, Ramiro issues the Voto de Santiago at Calahorra two days later, a vow that binds Christians to pilgrimage to Compostela and to pay dues to the apostle's church.

This battle did not happen that way. Back in the eighteenth century the historian Juan Francisco Masdeu showed that the story cannot be true. The charter of the vow, which Santiago relied on for centuries, is a forgery, produced only in the twelfth century. The first chronicle to tell of the apostle's apparition was written by Archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada of Toledo around 1243, four hundred years after the supposed event. In 1948 the historian Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz showed that behind the legend there is probably a real battle: the one at Albelda on Monte Laturce in 859, under King Ordoño the First. Archaeological finds confirm fighting there. In memory, this battle turned into another one, with a different king and a heavenly rider.

The legend was powerful all the same. It turned the quiet apostle buried in Galicia into the patron of a war, and the vow into a source of income for the church of Compostela. And it is closer to you than you think. In the Concatedral La Redonda, a few lanes away, lies a silver reliquary of Saint Prudentius from 1461. It comes from a ruined monastery on Monte Laturce near Clavijo, exactly where the legend places the battle.

The pilgrim and the Moor-slayer

Now go back out in front of the doorway of Santiago el Real. The master builder Juan Raón created it between 1669 and 1672. On it stands James as a pilgrim, a figure by the sculptor Juan de Amezqueta. And on the same doorway rides Santiago Matamoros, Saint James the Moor-slayer. This equestrian figure was made in 1737 by a Flemish artist whose name nobody knows.

Two images of the same man on one door. One walks the road you are walking. The other is an image from the Clavijo legend, a warrior against the Moors. The historian Jean Mitchell-Lanham has written that this supposed battle supplied one of the strongest ideological icons of Spanish national identity. For centuries the battle cry of Spanish armies was: „¡Santiago y cierra España!“, Saint James, and close ranks, Spain.

How to deal with this image today is disputed. After the Madrid bombings of March 2004 it was reported that Santiago cathedral wanted to remove its Matamoros figure, as a gesture of peace towards Spain's Muslims. After a public outcry, the church reversed the decision. One should not, it was said, remove a historic masterpiece because of an unfortunate event. Some see the Matamoros as a work of art and a piece of history, others as an enemy image carved in stone.

Logroño has kept its Matamoros, on the same doorway as the pilgrim. You don't have to decide. But it is worth looking at both and asking which James is walking with you on this road. The pilgrims went to the tomb of an apostle who had travelled on foot. The story of the heavenly rider was only written down centuries after the supposed battle.

La Redonda: a palm grove of stone

A little off the Camino, on the Plaza del Mercado, stand the two Baroque towers that are Logroño's landmark. They belong to the Concatedral de Santa María de la Redonda. The name, the round one, recalls a church that no longer exists. On this spot stood a Romanesque church, first mentioned in 1196, with a round or octagonal plan, probably similar to the churches of Eunate and Torres del Río in Navarre. You came through Torres del Río before Viana. Only the name of that church survives.

In 1435 the church became a collegiate church when it was merged with the dissolved collegiate church of Albelda. Between 1516 and 1538 the Romanesque building was pulled down and a late Gothic hall church with three naves went up. Eight slender columns carry the rib vault and branch out at the top like palm fronds. People speak of a „palmeral de piedra“, a palm grove of stone. When you go in and look up, you will see why.

Over the following three centuries more and more was added. The choir was built in 1607, the organ in 1715. From 1684 the high altar with the Tree of Jesse took shape. In 1756 a chapel for the Virgin of the Angels was built, and with it the two towers. Their builder, Martín de Beratúa, took the tower of Santo Tomás in Haro as his model, and the towers are regarded as a prime example of Rioja Baroque. The south tower is dedicated to Saint Paul, the north tower to Saint Peter. Between them opens a doorway carved in stone like an altarpiece.

Inside you will find art from all over Europe. There are six Flemish panel paintings that Gillis Coignet painted in Antwerp in 1584, the only works by this painter in Spain. There is an Immaculate Conception from the seventeenth century attributed to Gregorio Fernández, and a Madonna of silver and ivory, the Virgen de Valvanera, patroness of La Rioja. On the north wall of the ambulatory lies the tomb of Baldomero Espartero, the general who was twice head of government and once regent of Spain. He lived in Logroño and died here in 1879. His equestrian statue stands on the Espolón, the big square in the centre.

For you as a pilgrim, there is a figure of James in the right-hand aisle. And there is the fact that pilgrims on their way to Compostela have stopped here over the centuries, as the church itself stresses in its guided tour. Since 1959 La Redonda has been one of three cathedrals of equal rank in the diocese, together with Calahorra and Santo Domingo de la Calzada. Since 1993 it has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage listing of the Camino Francés.

A Michelangelo behind the altar?

Behind the high altar, in the ambulatory, hangs a small painting on wood that many visitors miss. It shows Christ on the cross, alive, not dead, with his mother, the apostle John and Mary Magdalene, and two angels above. It is called the Calvary of La Rioja. And it is attributed to Michelangelo.

The story begins with a bishop. Pedro González del Castillo was a learned and wealthy churchman who travelled often to Rome and bought works of art there for his chapel. He endowed the Chapel of the Holy Christ in La Redonda and was buried there, in a tomb with a praying figure. The chapel's foundation deed of 13 October 1627 describes the painting, in an ebony frame, and specifies that it should hang behind the bishop's tomb. A note in the margin says it was being kept in chests and should only be hung once the protective grille was in place. The attribution to Michelangelo goes back to this bishop's testimony.

Then the painting was forgotten for centuries. Only in the second half of the twentieth century was it attributed to the school of Michelangelo and hung in the ambulatory. Today the church itself tells a bigger story. Its tour says Michelangelo painted the picture for his friend Vittoria Colonna, a poet who in 1540 wanted a small painting for her private chapel. Sketches for it, the tour says, are in the Louvre, the Uffizi and the British Museum. After Vittoria's death in 1547, Michelangelo is said to have taken the painting back and given her face to Mary Magdalene. On the neck of the crucified Christ there is a Hebrew word, Gibor, the strong one.

What should you make of this? Honestly: it is not proven. Some studies consider the painting an original rather than a copy. They point out that the Virgin's left arm lies differently than in the known versions and that Mary Magdalene is not placed symmetrically, as if the painter had still been changing things as he worked. Other versions of the same subject are of clearly lower quality. The attribution is considered possible, but a conclusive study is still outstanding.

That does not make the painting any less interesting. Stand in front of it and look at it without knowing who painted it. A Christ who is still alive, and a woman at his feet who may bear the features of a poet Michelangelo revered. Whether he held the brush himself or one of his pupils did, you will not find out in Logroño. But in the middle of the Camino you will have stood before a painting that experts are still arguing about.

June 1521: the city holds its breath

In the spring of 1521 Logroño suddenly found itself on the front line. Nine years earlier, in 1512, Ferdinand the Catholic had occupied the Kingdom of Navarre. Now Henry of Albret, the ousted heir of Navarre, wanted his land back, and King Francis the First of France backed him. The timing was good. Castile was in the grip of the Comuneros revolt, and the viceroy of Navarre, the Duke of Nájera, had hardly any troops.

The French and Navarrese army was led by André de Foix, lord of Asparrós, a young general of about thirty and the brother of one of the French king's mistresses. On 12 May he took Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, the place where many pilgrims begin their Camino today. On 17 May the viceroy fled Pamplona. On 20 May the French bombarded the citadel of Pamplona. On the walls stood a young officer from the Basque Country. A cannonball shattered one of his legs and wounded the other. His name was Íñigo de Loyola. On his sickbed he read the lives of the saints, turned to God and later founded the Jesuit order. The same army that wounded him moved on south and by early June stood before Logroño.

Inside the city were about 2,000 Castilian soldiers who had marched in under Pedro de Beaumont and Pedro Vélez de Guevara. How large the army outside was, the figures vary widely. Older accounts spoke of 30,000 men; today's researchers reckon on about 8,000. On 6 June the French set up their guns. For four days they bombarded the city. Vélez de Guevara had four cannon and 120 arquebusiers, and they kept the enemy guns at a distance. The tower of San Bartolomé by the city wall was hit. Outside, the besiegers plundered the surrounding villages, Agoncillo, Lardero, Alberite, Albelda. There is no record of hand-to-hand fighting at the walls.

On 10 June André de Foix lifted the siege and withdrew. On the afternoon of 11 June the vanguard of the Duke of Nájera reached the city. Three weeks later, on 30 June 1521, the French army was crushed at Noáin outside Pamplona. Around 5,000 men were lost. André de Foix was wounded and captured, and later released for a ransom. Navarre stayed with Castile.

Fish, bread and wine: what remains of the myth

Logroño turned that week into a legend. On 11 June the city took a vow, the Voto de San Bernabé, because 11 June is the feast of the apostle Barnabas. It became the city's most important festival. To this day, the handing out of fish, bread and wine is the high point of the festivities. The story goes that the besieged had nothing else in their need, fish from the Ebro, bread and wine, and that this kept them going until the enemy withdrew.

Research takes a soberer view. In 2021 the Institute of Riojan Studies published a volume called „El cerco de Logroño de 1521: mitos y realidad“, the siege of Logroño, myths and reality. The siege lasted about a week, and the ring around the city was not even closed. There is no evidence of fishing during the siege; bread and wine, on the other hand, there certainly were. The vow speaks of 28,000 Frenchmen; contemporary reports give 12,000 to 15,000 marching into Navarre. The story of a sharpshooter only appears eighty years later. And the tale that the defenders flooded the French camp is suspiciously reminiscent of the miracle of Empel, which is said to have taken place in the Netherlands only in 1585.

Even so, a lot remains. Emperor Charles the Fifth rewarded the city for its loyalty and allowed it to add three fleurs-de-lis to its coat of arms, the emblem of the French kings. Between 1522 and 1534 the Puerta del Revellín, also called Puerta del Camino, was built into the city wall. Above it is the double-headed eagle of Charles the Fifth, and beside it the city's arms with the fleurs-de-lis. Tomorrow morning you will leave the old town through this gate. And if you are here in June: since 2015 San Bernabé has been a festival of national tourist interest, with a re-enactment of the siege in the streets.

Witches on trial, and an inquisitor who doubted

Logroño also has a story that is nothing to celebrate. In 1570 the Inquisition set up a tribunal here. In November 1610 it held a great auto-da-fé in Logroño, a public proclamation of sentences. Among the accused were people from Zugarramurdi, a village in the Pyrenees, who were charged with witchcraft. 31 sentences were proclaimed. Six people were burned alive, and five more, who had already died, in effigy.

But then something remarkable happened. One of the three judges, the inquisitor Alonso de Salazar Frías, had doubts. In 1611 he travelled to the area the accused came from, above all around Zugarramurdi, and collected almost 2,000 confessions, 1,384 of them from children between seven and fourteen. Most retracted their statements and said they had made them under torture. Salazar found not a single real proof of witchcraft. He wrote that the mere statement of an alleged witch was not enough to convict; external, verifiable evidence was needed. His two colleagues accused him of being in league with the Devil.

Salazar prevailed. In August 1614 all pending cases were dropped, and new, stricter rules of evidence came into force. After that no more witches were burned in Spain, long before the witch hunts ended in Protestant northern Europe. In Logroño a square bears his name. To this day he is called the witches' advocate.

Pilgrims, hospitals and a confraternity of Saint James

And the pilgrims? They were always there. In the twelfth century the pilgrims' guide in the Codex Calixtinus wrote a warning for the stage you have just walked: all the rivers between Estella and Logroño were unhealthy for people and animals. Then the Ebro. „Por Logroño pasa un río enorme llamado Ebro, de agua sana y rico en peces“, through Logroño flows a mighty river called the Ebro, with healthy water and rich in fish. For people who had mistrusted every stream for days, that was good news.

Anyone who arrived sick or exhausted found hospitals in the city. There were several small houses; one bore the name Santiago, another the name Roque Amador, after Our Lady of Rocamadour in southern France, a shrine connected with the Way of Saint James. At the end of the fifteenth century they began to be merged into one large hospital, the Holy Hospital of Our Lady of Rocamador and Santiago. The confraternity of Saint James, the Cofradía de Santiago, was among its patrons from 1532. An inventory from 1559 counts more than 22 mattresses. This house later became the provincial hospital.

The Way and the city lived off each other. Pilgrims brought money, news and new ideas, and the city earned from lodging, food, equipment and the care of sore feet. The pilgrims walked along Calle Ruavieja, the oldest street in the city, and the municipal hostel stands on it today. By the bridge stands a fielato, one of the little nineteenth-century toll houses where duty had to be paid on goods coming into the city. Today it is the pilgrim information point. Where taxes were once collected, you now get advice.

Wine beneath the old town

Calle Ruavieja is not only Logroño's oldest street. It was also the first where wine was made: white, clarete and red. Beneath the houses there are still cellars, called calados. In the Calado de San Gregorio, one such cellar from the seventeenth century has survived. In 2022 an exhibition there showed the old equipment: pumps, barrels, leather wineskins and a fan used to drive the fermentation gases out of the cellar. Next to it, remains of wine presses from the same period have been preserved, where the grapes were trodden by foot.

Rioja wine is old. The oldest document mentioning vines in the region dates from 873, from the archive of the monastery of San Millán. In the thirteenth century the monk Gonzalo de Berceo wrote there, the first poet in the Spanish language known by name, and wine turns up in his verses too. Logroño played a role early on. In 1560 the city's winegrowers chose a mark to vouch for the quality of their wine. And in 1635, at the winegrowers' request, the mayor banned carriages from the streets above the cellars, because the vibrations could harm the fermenting must.

Rioja made the leap to the wine you drink today in the nineteenth century. In 1852 Luciano Murrieta produced the area's first fine wine, after learning the method in Bordeaux. His name lives on in one of Logroño's great wine estates. In 1899 phylloxera reached Rioja, in 1902 a royal decree laid down what counts as Rioja, and in 1926 the regulatory council was set up that still watches over the wine today. In 1991 Rioja became the first wine region in Spain to be given the highest rank, as a qualified designation of origin.

In 2018 the vines grew on around 66,000 hectares, spread across La Rioja, the Basque province of Álava and Navarre. Nine out of ten hectares grow red grapes, and the most important is called Tempranillo. On the way to Nájera you will walk through these vineyards. And when you order a glass on Calle Laurel in the evening, you are drinking a wine whose history was partly written here, beneath your feet. Every year around 21 September the city celebrates the grape harvest with the San Mateo festival.

Logroño today

Logroño today is a lively city, capital of the autonomous region of La Rioja since 1982 and seat of its parliament, which meets in a former convent. About half of all the people in the region live here. For pilgrims, the city is a place to catch your breath: pharmacies, shops, bars, a long green path along the Ebro.

When this text was written, in autumn 2026, the municipal hostel had just been through a difficult time. For 33 years an association from La Rioja had run it with volunteers. In spring 2026 the city put the management out to tender again, the house was closed for more than two months, and the association lodged an objection. Since 1 July 2026 the Spanish federation of Camino associations has run the hostel, still on a donation basis. And in the parish hostel of Santiago el Real, in the shadow of the pilgrim and the Moor-slayer, pilgrims and volunteers cook together.

And so a circle closes. Since the Middle Ages, confraternities, hospitals, parishes and associations in this city have made sure that strangers find a roof. The names have changed. The task has not.

What Logroño gives you

Logroño is not a quiet place. After the villages of Navarre, the city is loud, crowded and cheerful in the evening. But perhaps that is exactly its lesson. The Camino never ran only through fields and woods. It ran over bridges that kept collapsing and being rebuilt, through cities that were besieged, past courts where people were condemned, and past churches where the truth is still argued over.

Here you have seen two images of the same apostle, and perhaps a painting by Michelangelo, perhaps not. You have heard how a week of siege became a legend, and how a single inquisitor found the courage to say: this is not true. Logroño shows you that stories and history are not the same thing, and that both have their worth.

In the evening, sit down in a bar, order the house speciality and a glass of Rioja. Tomorrow morning you will walk out through the gate of Charles the Fifth, past the reservoir, into the vineyards. Behind you the Ebro keeps flowing, just as it flowed when, so tradition says, Juan de Ortega built the first bridge here. The Way goes on.