It’s your fault, John, a friend once told me over a beer on the first night of the fiesta in Pamplona. You are Hemingway’s grandson, and as such I hold you genetically responsible for this anarchy, he explained, gesturing at the crowd and shouting out over the noise and the other people who were drinking and already drunk at the bar and in the surrounding streets.
Words by: John Hemingway & Photos by: Michael Hemingway
To be sure, La Fiesta de San Fermin, held every year from the sixth of July to the fourteenth is the bacchanal to end all bacchanals. It is also arguably the greatest party on earth and perhaps one of the few places left on this planet where you can see for yourself every morning at eight o’clock that everything in life is in fact fleeting and ephemeral.
I have run the encierro sixteen times and whenever I’m waiting for the rockets to be fired and the bulls to charge out of their pen I find myself doing things that I think will bring me good luck. I avoid stepping on cracks in the cobblestones. I roll the newspaper that I carry the way I have always rolled it, tightly and holding it in my left hand. I wear the shirt that I believe has protected me in the past, even though I know full well that the Toro Bravo is a wild animal and that there is nowhere I can hide and nothing that can be done to stop them when they come.
If the six bulls are together with the steers that lead them up the course and the group is compact then usually there is little to worry about. The bulls feel safer when they are with the herd. The trouble starts when one of them is separated from the rest and becomes a “suelto” as the Spanish call them, a lone bull. Feeling isolated it will often try to stake out its territory attacking anything that moves.
A few of my friends actually choose to run in front of the bulls, or on the horns as they call it, coming as close to disaster as they can. But here the objective is not to die. The objective is to run as one with the herd and to feel its power and strength. Some describe it as an almost mystical feeling, a connection to the ancestral hunt and a cultural link to the roots of early European art as depicted on the caves of Lascaux. Others see it as a curious mix of freedom and adrenaline in a world that has largely forgotten what it is to be a man.
But both groups I’m sure would agree with me that the most beautiful thing about the running of the bulls or the fiesta is that you never really know what is going to happen. The party in Pamplona is spontaneous. The people you meet, the things you see, the bull that narrowly misses killing you in the morning (or doesn’t), all of this happens unexpectedly, and then is gone. Leaving you, however, with the sensation that you have finally lived life to its fullest.
Great article w great writing and w really incredible pics. I love the comment about remembering what it is like to be a man. I love the pic of the man w hands in prayer. Well done. You and Michael make a great team as well. I miss it and cannot wait until I return. There is one other primal feeling that I had myself during my only two times to run. Back when those paintings were being painted on the cave walls, archeologists say the men would often run the bulls or other animals, some men in front as bait and the rest to coral them until they fell into a pit or over a cliff, so that the clan could eat…The earliest form of hunting, of being a provider. When I ran, unexpectedly, that image and the fear and thrill of the run hit me out of nowhere. I am not a big game hunter nor do i wish to be, but I have hunted other things since a child and never had that feeling of being at one w a herd of humans as we ran with, in front of and behind the bulls. You never really know the fear of being on the other end of the predator prey scenario as perhaps you do in the run or from the prospect of an encounter w a cornered bull. Perhaps in the 21st Century we forget these primal instincts while slowly rolling the cart down the aisle of the grocer, placing a plastic wrapped piece of meat from an animal that likewise never felt what it was like to live into its own nature but instead lived wout dignity before meeting its demise. There are always the critics. But to me a Spanish Fighting Bull has done what few if any of us domesticated animals have accomplished — lived into its nature w dignity and — if done rightly (or truly!) — found a noble death at the end. Pamplona is at least one place where you can feel it again. You captured all of that for me again while reading it. Thanks for posting this! Well done both of you.
Fantastic short story and synopsis of the greatest show on Earth.
Long live San Fernin and all the spiritual bonds it creates.
Through man or beast.
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