“Be in a bullring to more than 40 degrees Celsius, drinking water like crazy, evoke the king Jose Alfredo Jimenez and singing it is an experience that must be lived at least once in a lifetime,” I tell myself every time I see the bull run on TV. PamplonaIn honor to San Fermin.
I had never been to the San Fermin HolidaysIt seemed to me to be an event loaded with alcohol and long lines for eating, excesses and noise. Until a year ago I decided to take a look and my perception changed. I found it charming, organized. Order reigns, you can park, get to the center among trees, fountains and its imposing wall, part of the best preserved Renaissance military complexes in the world.
Pamplonaapple of discord between the crowns of Castile, Aragon and Francewas a Basque settlement in the Iron Age. It was founded by Pompey, a Roman generalin 74 BC, who named it Pompaelo.
The ‘chupinazo’, the firing of a rocket, a tradition that is almost a century old, takes place every 6th of July at midday. Every day, and until today, another one is fired at eight in the morning to announce the running of the bulls. It is a street spectacle where the bulls stampede out of the corrals towards the bullring, where they will be fought later.
They cover eight hundred and fifty metres in less than three minutes, urged on by shepherds and surrounded by thousands of professional and amateur runners. Before the race, they pray three times to Saint Fermin, a martyr from the 4th century who died in France and was forgotten until his legend was reborn in the 12th century in his birthplace, Pamplona (Navarra), less than an hour from San Sebastian. It is said that he was the first bishop in history, but there is no proof of this. In fact, he is not the patron saint, but it seems as if he were. He died with his throat cut and that is why the official dress is: immaculate white and a red scarf around the neck, symbolising the blood shed.
Sanfermines or Pamplonada is the festival that Hemingway described in his book Fiesta, in fact, a significant part of the tourists who visit it annually are from the United States, the writer’s homeland. The most enthusiastic are the French, especially from the French Basque region where Bayonne, its capital, is located, which coincidentally this year, on the occasion of the Olympics in Paris, brought forward its celebrations inspired by the Navarrese ones, in fact, they dress in white and red around the neck.
They started on Wednesday 10th July at five in the afternoon and end this Sunday. I was there last year too. There are heifers, fireworks, sports activities, children’s activities, Basque pelota, pelota, jazz, petanque and of course, bullfights. The main protagonists are the rugby players who established them inspired by the Pamplona festival. In fact, when they were inaugurated, the mayor, in the background, gave them the keys to the three neighbourhoods.
It is a medieval city, twenty minutes from San Sebastian, small, with a lot of charm, fortified, two thousand years old and with Roman traces, fifty thousand inhabitants and between the rivers Adur and Nive. At its peak, in the absence of bars everywhere like Pamplona, there are stalls and food trucks with fast food.
“There are plenty of bars, ‘pirate’ bars or improvised ones for doctors, friends from university, countries: Vietnam, Senegal,” describes Michel Lamarque from Bayonne. Laughing, he says that the Senegalese man is very successful because of his rum-based drink, which many think is produced by that country. He has never had sugar cane and does not drink alcohol, he is Muslim. “It is as if a Chinese person sold sake or a Mexican, vodka.” He is struck by the fact that Bayonne and Pamplona are sisters, despite being separated by a hundred kilometres on each side of the Pyrenees, one is maritime and has a very large river and the other, a very dry corner in a basin of multicoloured fields bathed by the Arga river. They are different worlds, intertwined by the festival, the bulls, the devotion to red and white.
@irmaa.aguilar
More from the same author:
#worlds #united #party
