Running with the Bulls in Pamplona

"All festivals, of course, are acts of collective myth-making, chances for a nation to advertise its idealized image of itself.  

 "Pico Iyer, The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto (2011)

"You're not a moron. You're only a case of arrested development."  

 Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926)

Pamplona, Spain (July 6-14) A million drunks in red kerchiefs. White t-shirts soaked through with beer. Another lost generation doing Ernest Hemingway. Just before 8 AM,  even the atheists start praying to San Fermin, Pamplona's premier patron saint.  An explosion from the corral. Twelve half-ton running machines thunder through the gates of the corral. Six steers, cowbells clanging, herd six fighting bulls on a four minute dash to the Corrida de Torros.  A double line of wooden barricades lines narrow medieval streets, enclosing beasts and runners; squeezing haunches and hooves against the shoulders and spines of ten experienced maestros and way too many first-timers who haven’t got a clue.  Day three of the 2013 "Encierro".  No one gored yet.

Don't get all excited.  Tejano and I did NOT watch the bulls run in Pamplona (Iruña in Basque).  I’d no more join Pamplona’s testosterone-fueled spring break scene than parachute into Times Square for the New Years Eve ball drop. 

But, this past Sunday when my Facebook friend George announced the 2013 Running of the Bulls, he posted such a perfect Hemingway quote, I had to have another look at Pamplona.

Quite frankly, Pamplona didn't make either of our favorites lists when Tejano and I stopped there in May.  It certainly didn't look like this:   

Revelers are chased by bulls on the Estafeta corner Sunday, July 7, 2013. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)

Read more: http://tinyurl.com/inquirerpamplona

In Spanish, they call Running the Bulls "El Encierro," the enclosing, because before they square off against matadors at six afternoon bullfights, these magnificent animals must  be "fenced in," safely transported through city streets to the Plaza de Torros.  You'd think for this preliminary stage, they'd want to avoid chaos, saving bloodshed for the final show. But, Pamplona has a long, proud tradition of allowing daredevils to run amok. The first written account of the bull runs dates from 1386; complaints about tourists with loose morals from the 1800's. With help from Pamplona's other patron saint (Ernest Hemingway), his 1926 novel "The Sun Also Rises" and the manly man school of bullfighter blood and gore, Pamplona has turned this romp through town into a big-time tourist attraction.  Bull runs happen all over Spain, Portugal and other parts of Europe.  Only Pamplona's draws over a million people, enough to fill an entire tent city.

 56 Days 23 hours 14 minutes and 59 seconds until El Chupinazo

The Friday we arrived, Pamplona's was the sleepiest center city I'd seen in Spain.  It could've been downtown Buffalo on a Sunday, great architecture and churches but all the action long gone to the suburbs. It felt like everything was on hold.  Outside the San Fermin T-shirt and souvenir Kukuxumusu (Basque for "flea kiss"), the countdown clicked.  Otherwise, Pamplona was very quiet.

Bull whimsy

Pamplona's Plaza del Castelo, lunchtime Friday.  A block away, the brave bulls run.

A protest against budget cuts, colorful, but subdued, greeted us at La Diputacion - El Palacio de Navarre (seat of the Presidency of the Regional Government).  We'd seen rallies and marches all over Spain where "El Crisis" has hit hard.

Hard to get the issue when the banners are in Basque.  Flags work in every language.

Favorite protest signs: "Less Sausage. More Work" 

The deserted Medieval Quarter of the Bull run 

The tapas bars along Calle Estafeta were plenty inviting, but nothing to compare with the gastronomic wizardry of San Sebastian or Barcelona.  A disappointing lack of regulars.  Maybe they get more lively after work, but this was lunchtime.  

The place with the long line out the door was a bakery called Ultramarinos Beatriz where the specialty is  apple, milk chocolate and sweet pumpkin  mini-croissants by weight.  We loaded up.  Worth the trip to Pamplona.

Chocolate and mini-croissants sold by weight at Beatriz

Photo Op for pilgrims at Pamplona's City Hall

This is Pamplona's City Hall/ Ayuntamiento, where at noon on July 6, Pamplona's mayor, with the help of a rocket called "el chupinazo", launches each year's Festival of San Fermin.

(The unfurling of an enormous Basque flag from the front of the building delayed 2013's kick-off for about 20 minutes.)


In May, City Hall is a good stop for pilgrims en route to Santiago de Campostelo. The women you see in the foreground have just completed their first 45 miles. Just 455 more miles and a month of walking to go. 

There's only so many cathedrals and churches you can take in.  After five weeks crossing Spain, we stayed out of Pamplona's, also giving a wide berth to  its Opus Dei university and hospitals, legacy of the Franco era when other Basque universities were shuttered.

Pamplona makes the most of their Hemingway connections offering, not only souvenirs (dark glasses, photos), but Hemingway pizza and kebabs. 

Slow season souvenirs

If you're inspired, you can do an entire circuit of Hemingway sites: his bust outside the Plaza de Torros,  his favorite suite at the Hotel La Perla, his life-sized statue by the Bar at Cafe Iruña.  You'll have to wait for El Encierro to witness the white beards Papa Hemingway runners. (Find some of these images on my Pamplona Pinterest Board. )

Mostly, Tejano and I took a pass on Hemingway.

During his college days in the early 1970's, Tejano and a girlfriend hitchhiked Europe and came to see the bulls run. 

He said once was more than enough, but heading down a deserted Avenida Roncesvalles, there was Basque artist Rafael Huerta Celaya's irresistible Monument to the Encierro...

Some guys just can't help themselves

Even Tejano came to the rescue.

BOTTOM LINE:  Pamplona is a sleepy mid-sized city that once a year explodes with tourists.  (Though, the Fall Festival of San Fermin sounds much more manageable and local than July's, I'll have to rely on other readers with direct experience for their comments. )

Our experience: a bit of a ghost town;  a center city devoid of both tourists and locals. We couldn't help but compare its tapas scene to San Sebastian's, it's sites and street life to almost anywhere else in Spain. 

My advice: Visit for a few hours en route to somewhere else or as part of a day trip.  For us, it was the southernmost destination on a larger driving loop through Basque country, Grab a bite to eat.  Take your picture by the Encierro Monument or next to Hemingway. Soak up some history, poke your head into a few churches and museums (we were maxed out!), and meander the quiet medieval streets as the City braces itself for another Running of the Bulls.  If you're looking for an overnight and a couple of days in a medium-size, low-keyed but interesting destination, there are better places to go.

Pamplona's Running of the Bulls/El Encierro by the Numbers

When:  Every July 7-14th during the Feast of San Fermin, patron Saint of Pamplona

Duration:  About 4 minutes, starting at 8 AM

Where:  Four narrow medieval streets that connect the corral and the bullring, about a block off the main square of Pamplona, Spain - or as the Basques whose country it is say: Iruña.

Distance:  903 yards (just over .5 of a mile, for those of us who are spatially challenged)

The 903 yard route (about half a mile) from the corral to the corrida/bull ring

Casualties:  15 since 1910 -- 13 Spaniards, 1 Mexican, 1 United States ( a 22 year old from Illinois) 
Injuries:  200-300 a year, though mostly not serious.

Who can participate:  Anyone over 18 who isn't drunk and who doesn't incite the bulls.

How many bulls:  Six headed for the afternoon bullfights guided by six steers in their midst and another three from behind.

Cast bronze bull butts (1994)

More Information:

• Rick Steve's "Spain 2013" offers a quick walking tour and orientation to Pamplona, part of his chapter on The Camino.
• Pamplona as part of a Basque Country driving tour, mostly doable in one day as a loop from San Sebastian.  We followed DRIVE 5 from "Back Roads Spain".
• Fascinating History of the greater region:  "The Basque History of the World" by Mark Kurlansky
• Wikipedia on Pamplona, Saint Fermin and the Running of the Bulls, where you'll also get to read about wacky kindred events:  The Big Easy Rollergirls in New Orleans, The Rangoria, New Zealand Sheep Run, The BallyJamesduff, Ireland Running of the Wild Boars.
• On Netflix:  The Sun Also Rises (1957 Classic) and Bull Runners of Pamplona (2012 Documentary)
• Special points for reading this far: Peta's Running of the Nudes  annual protest.

Where to begin?

Yesterday morning, Sandy felt like the personal storm story I'd be perfecting, one of those "where were you?" and "how'd you manage?"conversation starters New Yorkers were beginning to share as we navigated our ways back to routine: clearing tree limbs, bumping elbows at re-opened neighborhood eateries, and -- finally! --  reconnecting with familiar voices via cellphone, so we could complain about erratic Verizon service.

My emerging story, shared way too far and wide on Facebook, featured Parkside Avenue's post-storm band of neighbors,  armed with saws and black garbage bags and lead by the self-proclaimed "Strong Jamaican Man".

In 1990, our foursome of ACORN organizers briefly considered moving to an elegant two-family overlooking the B12 bus stop on this block of Parkside Ave. between Bedford and Flatbush. Bus fumes, yes, but also marble bathroom fixtures circa Amelia Earhart, an earlier resident.  More, though, than that stately mansion with a bargain basement pricetag, we were drawn by the four side-by-side families whose toddlers shared nearby Maple Street School with my daughter Anna Poe-Kest and my niece Jessie Streich-Kest, born three months apart.

For years, the adjoining back decks of the Miller-Conroy-Ehrlich-Coplon/Moreno clans enticed us to summer evening pot-luck dinners and, even better -- to the best annual backyard dance party in Brooklyn.  Every September, four yards became one grand ballroom.  Everyone's downstairs front doors wide opened wide to the world, an irresistible magnet to under-aged neighborhood kids; their persistent reconnaissance missions past distracted bartenders mostly thwarted, thanks to several hundred pairs of watchful in loco parental eyes.  By dark,  a crush of dancers captured the basketball court, salsa and motown blared through four-foot tall speakers, alternating with ever-shifting acoustic and electric sets by local musicians performing from a deck overhead.  Major talents in this neighborhood, even today; an extended musical community that reaches to Bob Telson in Argentina and Angelique Kidjo, now back in Brooklyn.  By midnight, the delighted crush of party-goers chanted and cheered Jeff Coplon's annual appearance as Mick Jagger -- spastic, uncanny.  The other equally reliable appearance: then State Senator and now Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz.  Even without the accompanying tubs of (Brooklyn's own) Uncle Louie G ice cream, we would've tolerated his cornball Brooklyn boosterism --  "We love you, Marty!"  No political speeches.

Those party nights, no one in those houses slept until the next morning.  Until a  bleary-eyed cleanup crew, many of whom had claimed couches rather than drive home,  shoveled the last of the Parkside Avenue party into black garbage bags and dragged them to the curb.

No wonder, I've long declared myself an honorary Parkside Avenue resident.  No wonder it became my safe haven when Sandy threatened and my own home was on loan to a family from Sweden.  And, no wonder it felt great to be part of  yesterday's black garbage bag brigade.

Monday, we'd mostly obeyed official directives to stay indoors, six of us hunkering down with comfort food chili with apple pie and the endless loop of storm images from Long Beach, Battery Park, the West 57th Street crane, Long Beach, Battery Park....

At some point late afternoon, the message got through that that this storm was not just another weatherman's wet dream.  Against our own inclinations, we calmed to images of Mike, Andrew and -- I can't believe I'm going to say this -- Chris battling his head cold. Governor Cuomo favored the drama of pounding, floodlit surf;  the other two members of NY/NJ's regional elected trifecta, a steady recitation of closings and cautions press conference style. All three reassured us. Glued to the TV, we gradually absorbed the enormity of a storm we'd all underestimated.

Around noon Tuesday, a diverse band of neighbors emerged from grand Lefferts Gardens houses and more down and out down the block apartments to do battle with a downed pear tree, one of two neighborhood giants felled by the storm.  The uprooted monster blocked pedestrians on the sidewalk;  more hazardously, it overwhelmed an ancient fire hydrant in branches and hard, BB-sized pears.  I'd thought that rusty hydrant dormant and inoperable, but was reassured that it had  miraculously gushed into action when "the big fire" threatened a corner building.

Our shared mission: insure safe passage for the sidewalkers (en route to PS 92 soon -- we hoped), the MTA bus riders and, the fire trucks (we hoped NOT).

At 1:15 the bottom fell out of my storm story.  Online, I read a voicemail from my friend Laura Kenny in New Jersey, somewhat incomprehensibly transcribed, googletalk style:

Cate.  It's Laura lease lot suggest emailed me about your needs.  Jet the And I'm so sorry to hear this.  When you get a chance.  I'm sure you're quite busy.  Give me a call and of course,  if there's anything I can do let me know and an accountant, but just wanna hear that you're okay. Take care, Kay.  Bye Bye.

After several tries through busy circuits, I reached Laura. Then, the bottom fell out of my world.