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Biography: Navarre and Pamplona
Pamplona’s ‘Favourite Son’ and the Mausoleum
It was also during the San Fermín Festival that the City Council named him Pamplona’s ‘Favourite Son’. The date: 6th July 1902. That morning, members of the Council went to the Hotel La Perla to present him with this honour, as the Santa Cecilia Orchestra and the Pamplona Choral Society performed a piece entitled “Himno a Sarasate” (anon).
The Council had already made its decision on the 10th February 1900, wishing to present him with this tribute as a mark of “gratitude for the many favours bestowed (…), the affection he has always shown this city and the donation of a magnificent collection of jewellery and insignias to set up a public museum”.
It was around this time that Sarasate bought “Villa Navarra”, a magnificent mansion in the French Basque town of Biarritz, where he would spend long periods of time, close to his home town; and it was here that he died on the 20th of September 1908 at the age of 64, having contracted pulmonary emphysema. Three months earlier, at the Gayarre Theatre, the then Mayor, Daniel Irujo, presented him with the Great Cross of Alfonso XII, on the 12th of July, at his last ever final concert in the capital of Navarre.
As Pamplona's Favourite Son, in his last will and testament, he left his most valuable personal possessions and music collections to the city, which are now on display at the Pablo Sarasate Museum.
On the 25th of September, his embalmed body arrived in Pamplona to the music of Chopin's Funeral March. The funeral chapel was set up in City Hall and a period of official mourning was declared. The Mayor, accompanied by City councillors Iraizoz and Ciganda, led the funeral procession, and 12 members of the Pamplona Choral Society carried Sarasate’s coffin.
On the 27th of September, an official funeral was held at Pamplona Cathedral, an event covered by over 1200 newspapers throughout the world, which sent telegrams to Pamplona City Council expressing their condolences for the death of this great artist.
He was buried in October in Pamplona Cemetery, where he was laid to rest in a beautiful white marble mausoleum, which stands as a tribute to the Favourite Son of the city where he was born.
My dear fellow countrymen know that I’ll never change; I’ll always love my country and my people, the people from Navarra…
