According to Herwig Wolfram, Wamba means "big paunch" in Gothic (like German: "Wampe", cognate to English "womb") and may have been a nickname.

After ascending the throne on 1 September 672, Wamba faced a revolt from Hilderic, governor of Nîmes, who had himself aspired to the kingship.

[5] As Wamba moved on Narbonne, Paul placed General Wittimer in charge of the city and retired to Nîmes.

In the Chronicle of Alfonso III (written 200 years later) it stated, "In Wamba's time, 270 Saracen ships attacked the coast of Hispania and there all of them were burned."

In the Visigothic law books, Wamba decrees that all the people, regardless of their religion, and even if they are clergy, are required to defend the kingdom if it is attacked by a foreign foe.

This law was created to solve a problem of desertion: "For, whenever an enemy invades the provinces of our kingdom … [many of] those who inhabit the border … disappear so that, by this means, there is no mutual support in battle."

That the people were often unwilling to defend the kingdom is further shown by another of Wamba's edicts, in which slaves were freed in order to the fill the ranks of the army.

This suggests not only a shortage of volunteers from among the Hispano-Romans who made up the bulk of the population ruled by the Visigothic lords, but also an army heavy in conscripts and the coerced.

Wamba was a reformist king who, according to Charles Julian Bishko, "tried to set up at Aquis (Chaves) in Gallaecia a monastic see of the same type as Dume–Braga, i. e., involving the sort of episcopus sub regula associated with early pactualism.

This manoeuvre was successfully blocked by the metropolitan church of Emérita with the full support of the fathers of the XIIth Council of Toledo (681).

"[8] In 680, Wamba fell ill or (according to the Chronicle of Alfonso III two hundred years later) was poisoned in Pampliega, near Burgos.

According to one tradition, Wamba was born in Egitânia,[10] a settlement surrounded by Roman walls that is today called Idanha-a-Velha in the Idanha-a-Nova municipality, and located to the northeast of Castelo Branco in Portugal.

However, the most famous tradition says he held land and possessions in Pujerra[12] (or Buxarra as it was once called) in Málaga Province, an Andalusian mountain village, nestled amid forests of chestnut trees near the Genil river in southern Spain.

The ruins of Molino de Capilla (Mill of the Chapel) are nearby, and close to which lay the village of Cenay, which some consider to be Wamba's actual birthplace.

After their arrival, they overheard a peasant woman call to her son named Wamba, who was tending cattle with a stick.

Hither came the electors—the great nobles, the bishops, and the generals—and here they debated who should be king, finally settling on a venerable Goth named Wamba, the one man of note in all the kingdom who throughout his life had declined to accept rank and station.

[14]Saint Leo, declaring he had been given divine guidance, instructed the electors to seek out a husbandman named Wamba.

They reasoned, begged and implored until Wamba, who wanted to get rid of them, said: "I will accept the crown when the dry rod in my hand grows green again—and not till then.

[14] The legend of the stick thrust into the ground is also associated with the town of Guimarães, southwest of Braga in the Costa Verde of Portugal (the northwest corner of the country).

In a 10th-century Life of Saint Giles, written for the benefit of pilgrims, a legend is recorded about how, one day, when King Wamba (also known as Flavius) was out hunting in the forest between Arles and Nîmes in Provence, he began to pursue a hind (deer).

[15] Charles Morris writes that, during Wamba's reign: One ambitious noble named Paul, who thought it would be an easy thing to take the throne from an old man who had shown so plainly that he did not want it, rose in rebellion.

Wamba accepted this change and happily assumed monastic orders, abdicating the throne to live out the last seven years of his life as a monk.

[14] Ironically, it was Wamba's nephew, son of his sister Ariberga, Ergica, who married Erwig's daughter and became the new king at his father in law's death.