Navarre ( nə-VAR; Spanish: Navarra [naˈβara] ; Basque: Nafarroa [nafaro.a]), officially the Chartered Community of Navarre, is a landlocked foral autonomous community and province in northern Spain, bordering the Basque Autonomous Community, La Rioja, and Aragon in Spain and Nouvelle-Aquitaine in France. The capital city is Pamplona (Basque: Iruña). The present-day province makes up the majority of the territory of the medieval Kingdom of Navarre, a long-standing Pyrenean kingdom that occupied lands on both sides of the western Pyrenees, with its northernmost part, Lower Navarre, located in the southwest corner of France.
Navarre is in the transition zone between the green Cantabrian Coast and semi-arid interior areas and thus its landscapes vary widely across the region. Being in a transition zone also produces a highly variable climate, with summers that are a mix of cooler spells and heat waves, and winters that are mild for the latitude. Navarre is considered by Basque nationalists to be one of the historic Basque provinces: its Basque features are conspicuous in the north, but virtually absent on the southern fringes. The best-known event in Navarre is the annual festival of San Fermín held in Pamplona in July.
The first documented use of a name resembling Navarra, Nafarroa, or Naparroa is a reference to navarros, in Eginhard's early-9th-century chronicle of the feats of the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, describing his intrusion to the Ebro river. Other Royal Frankish Annals feature nabarros. There are two proposed etymologies for the name.
Basque nabar (declined absolute singular nabarra): "brownish", "multicolour" (i. e. in contrast to the green mountainous lands north of the original County of Navarre).
Basque naba (or Spanish nava): "valley", "plain" + Basque herri ("people", "land").
The linguist Joan Coromines considers naba to be linguistically part of a wider Vasconic or Aquitanian language substrate, rather than Basque per se.
The official name in Basque is Nafarroa, but the form Nafarroa Garaia (Upper Navarre) is also often seen, sometimes for irredentist reasons, but mostly to distinguish the province from neighboring Lower Navarre.
Before and during the Roman Empire, the Vascones populated the southern slopes of the Pyrenees, including the area which would ultimately become Navarre. In the mountainous north, the Vascones escaped large-scale Roman settlement, except for some coastal areas—for example Oiasso (in what is now Gipuzkoa)—and the flatter areas to the south, Calagurris (in what is now La Rioja), which were amenable to large-scale Roman farming—vineyards, olives, and wheat crops. There is no evidence of battles fought or general hostility between Romans and Basques, as they had the same enemies.
Neither the Visigoths nor the Franks ever completely subjugated the area. The Vascones (to become the Basques) assimilated neighbouring tribes, such as the Suessetani from the area known today as Aragon and the Caristii, Varduli, and Autrigones, likely of Celtic origin, who inhabited the area of today's Basque Country, by the 7th century AD. In the year 778, the Basques defeated a Frankish army at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass.
Following the Battle of Roncevaux Pass (824), the Basque chieftain Iñigo Arista was elected King of Pamplona supported by the muwallad Banu Qasi of Tudela, establishing a Basque kingdom that was later called Navarre. That kingdom reached its zenith during the reign of Sancho III, comprising most of the Christian realms to the south of the Pyrenees, and even a short overlordship of Gascony (in the early 11th century).
When Sancho III died in 1035, the kingdom was divided between his sons. It never fully recovered its political power, while its commercial importance increased as traders and pilgrims (the Francs) poured into the kingdom via the Way of Saint James. In 1200, Navarre lost the key western Basque districts to Alphonse VIII of Castile, leaving the kingdom landlocked. Navarre then contributed with a small but symbolic force of 200 knights to the decisive Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 against the Almohads.
The native line of kings came to an end in 1234; their heirs intermarried with French dynasties. However, the Navarrese kept most of their strong laws and institutions. The death of Queen Blanche I (1441) inaugurated a civil war period between the Beaumont and Agramont confederacies with the intervention of the Castilian-Aragonese House of Trastámara in Navarre's internal affairs. In 1512, Navarre was invaded by Ferdinand the Catholic's troops, with Queen Catherine and King John III withdrawing to the north of the Pyrenees, and establishing a Kingdom of Navarre-Béarn, led by Queen Joan III as of 1555.
To the south of the Pyrenees, Navarre was annexed to the Crown of Castile in 1515, but kept a separate ambiguous status, and a shaky balance up to 1610—King Henry IV was ready to march over Spanish Navarre. A Chartered Government was established (the Diputación), and the kingdom managed to keep home rule. Tensions with the Spanish government came to a head as of 1794, when Spanish premier Manuel Godoy attempted to suppress Navarrese and Basque self-government altogether, with the end of the First Carlist War (1839 – 1841) definitely bringing the kingdom and its home rule (fueros) to an end.
After the 1839 Convention of Bergara, a reduced version of home rule (fueros) was passed in 1839. However, the 1841 Act for the Modification of Fueros (later called the "Compromise Act", Ley Paccionada) definitely made the kingdom into a province after a compromise was reached by the Spanish government with officials of the Provincial Council of Navarre. The relocation of customs from the Ebro river to the Pyrenees in 1841 prompted the collapse of Navarre's customary cross-Pyrenean trade and the rise of smuggling.
Amid instability in Spain, Carlists took over in Navarre and the rest of the Basque provinces. An actual Basque state was established during the Third Carlist War with Estella as its capital (1872 – 1876), but King Alfonso XII's restoration in the throne of Spain and a counter-attack prompted the Carlist defeat. The end of the Third Carlist War saw a renewed wave of Spanish centralisation directly affecting Navarre.
In 1893 – 1894, the Gamazada popular uprising took place centred in Pamplona against Madrid's governmental decisions breaching the 1841 chartered provisions. Except for a small faction (the so-called Alfonsinos), all parties in Navarre agreed on the need for a new political framework based on home rule within the Laurak Bat, the Basque districts in Spain. Among these, the Carlists stood out, who politically dominated the province, and resented an increased string of rulings and laws passed by Madrid, as well as left leaning influences. Unlike Biscay or Gipuzkoa, Navarre did not develop manufacturing during this period, remaining a basically rural economy.
Republic and military uprising
In 1932, a Basque Country's separate statute failed to take off over disagreements on the centrality of Catholicism, a scene of political radicalisation ensued dividing the leftist and rightist forces during the 2nd Spanish Republic (1931 – 1939). Thousands of landless labourers occupied properties of wealthy landowners in October 1933, leaving the latter eager for revenge. The most reactionary and clerical Carlists came to prominence, ideologues such as Víctor Pradera, and an understanding with General Mola paved the way to the Spanish Nationalist uprising in Pamplona (18 July 1936).