Stories of Pamplona, our epic town

And when you walk through the streets of Pamplona, those that let you see past histories through its mansions, its museums, in the architecture of its churches and keeps alive in its imposing mountains rising from the beautiful eastern cordillera the memory of the Hulago; they, who inhabited 1000 years B.C. the lands of nortesantandereanas and left for the inhabitants of the present the legacy of a hospitable and friendly culture derived from the nature of the settlement of Chibcha language. These aborigines who by 1530 would receive from their conquerors the name of Chitareros and from this moment would be forced to immerse themselves in a process of miscegenation and conquest by the fact of consenting in the deposit of their lands the metal that would gestate the greed of the Spaniards...

Pamplona, so called in homage to the capital of Navarra, land of the founders Ortún Velazco de Velásques and Pedro de Ursúa, who established from Spain a culture of the colony. From November 1, 1549 it was declared city under royal decree, this day corresponded to the ceremony of all the saints, for that reason, it took the first of many qualifiers "Valley of the Holy Spirit".

From there, the Spaniards divided the geographical structure of the city into blocks that are still preserved, thus replacing the thatched huts and bareque. They began the erection of beautiful mansions and majestic ecclesiastical buildings that gave a new name 'mitrada city' by the same solemnity that they imparted. The new Pamploneses, owners of the gold extracted from the hills of Santurban and Vetas, began the evangelization and domination of the Hulago Valley. By this time the residents gave a new name 'Pamplonilla la loca', because of the fever and the waste that the Spaniards made with the riches they extracted from the land.

On January 16, 1644 Pamplona felt an earthquake that destroyed a large part of the colonial city, although at present there are still preserved mansions that were converted into museums and others preserved by their owners, the chapels that survived the earthquake were restored and others like the Cathedral Santa Clara were built again.

The Spaniards maintained their reign until July 4, 1810, when Doña Agueda Gallardo de Villamizar snatched the baton from one of its founders, thus overturning the heroic event that prompted the country to an act of revolution, retaken by Santa Fe de Bogotá on July 20 of the same year; therefore, it received from the liberator Simón Bolivar the title of 'patriot city'. Afterwards, the city of the fog would be the epicenter of those who planned the battles that would give the country its total independence, and these acts led to the first constitution of Colombia, the "Constitution of Cúcuta of 1821", to be drawn up in the Province of Pamplona.