Pompey founds (according to tradition), the town of Pompaelo (modern Pamplona), located about two hundred miles (three hundred and twenty kilometers) northeast of Madrid and twenty-four miles (forty kilometers) from the present French border on a pass through the Pyrenees.

In the winter of 75–74 BCE, the area serves as a camp for Pompey in the war against Sertorius.

Actually, it is the chief town of the Vascones, who call it Iruña, 'the city'.

Pamplona had undergone much disruption and destruction during the Germanic invasions of 409 and later as a result of Rechiar’s ravaging, starting a cycle of general decline along with other towns across the Basque territory but managing to keep some sort of urban life.

Euric now extends the Visigothic power in Hispania; peacefully conquering the cities of Pamplona, …

Chlothar, king of the Franks, had in 531 received pleas from his sister Clotilde, claiming that her Arian husband Amalaric, the Visigothic king of Hispania, was grossly mistreating her, a Catholic.

Childebert had gone down with an army and defeated the Gothic king, killing him in battle, but Clotilde had died of unknown causes on her return journey to Paris.

Undertaking subsequent expeditions against the Visigoths, Childebert takes possession of Pamplona in 542 with the help of his brother Chlothar.

Charles, called home from his invasion of northern Spain to deal with problems in Saxony, passes through Pamplona and, evidently mistaking the ancient Christian Basque city for a Moorish town, razes it.

The Basques extend their territory southeast to the limits of the county of Barcelona to obtain their first kingdom, Navarre, at the expense of the neighboring Kingdom of León (the former Galician kingdom) and the once-formidable Umayyad Caliphate.

García Íñiguez, the son of Íñigo Arista, the first king of a Basque dynasty ruling in Pamplona, had been educated in Córdoba, as a guest at the court of the Emir of Córdoba.

When his father was stricken by paralysis in 842, García had become regent of the kingdom (or perhaps co-regent with his uncle Fortún Íñiguez).

He and his kinsman Mūsā ibn Mūsā ibn Fortún of the Banu Qasi had rebelled against the Cordoban emir in 843.

This rebellion had been put down by Emir Abd ar-Rahman II, who had attacked the Kingdom of Pamplona, defeating García badly and killing Fortún.

At his father's death in 851/2 (237 A.H.), he succeeds to the crown.

A coalition of enemies of the king of Pamplona, Fortún Garcés, consisting of Lubb ibn Muhammed of the Banu Qasi, King Alfonso III of Asturias, Galindo Aznar II of Aragon and Sancho's uncle, Raymond I of Pallars and Ribagorza, deposes Fortún in 905, and puts Sancho on the throne in his place.

Sancho has involved himself in the squabbles among the Muslim lords to the south with repeated success.

In 907, he had turned on his former ally Lubb ibn Muhammad, killing him in battle.

Four years later, another former ally, Galindo Aznar, joins with his brother-in-law Muhammad al-Tawil and Abd Allah ibn Lubb ibn Qasi to attack Sancho, but they are defeated and neutralized as a threat.

Al-Tawil flees and is killed shortly afterward, and the power of the Banu Qasi is severely crippled, while Galindo is forced into vassalage to Sancho, leading to the incorporation of the County of Aragon into the Pamplona kingdom.

Abd ar-Rahman reaches the Basque city of Pamplona, which is sacked and its cathedral church demolished.

Jimeno Garcés of Pamplona is sometimes said to have been regent for his nephew, García, but at least one contemporary document in which both appear names him and not his nephew as king.

Only in 931, the last year of his reign, will García also appear with the royal title.

Jimeno takes an army south in 927 to support his Banu Qasi kinsman, causing Abd-ar-Rahman III, Emir of Córdoba, nephew of Jimeno's wife, to retreat without offering battle.