The Feast of San Fermin is one of the world’s most famous
festivals, mostly because of the running of the bulls each morning of the
eight-day event . I didn’t expect to attend since I thought I’d still be hiking
the Haute Route, so I paid Pamplona a visit about a month earlier before I
started walking. With changes in my
itinerary and my decision not to try to walk the entire distance, I thought
“Hey, why not attend one of the world’s biggest parties?”

It was a multiple bus trip from Torla to Pamplona with stops
in Huesca and Zaragoza. That got us into town quite late, so Doug and I went
right to the private hostel room he booked in a university dorm at the edge of
town. The spic and span town I spent a day in a week earlier was now filthy with
rubbish strewn about and people sleeping everywhere.

We made a plan. We’d get up before dawn, head into town, and
scope out a place along the route to watch the macho muchachos get gored a few
hours before the bulls and boys do their thing at 8:00 A.M. sharp.

The festival celebrates Saint Fermin, the patron saint of
Navarre, the son of a third century Roman senator from the Pamplona area who
converted to Christianity, became a priest, and was martyred in 303 A .D. The
festival dates from medieval times when festivities around religious devotion
to the saint became intertwined with commercial secular fairs that included
cattle markets and the bullfighting that grew up around them. Although such
festivals, bullfights, and bull runs take place in other places in Spain,
Pamplona’s is especially popular with foreigners because of Hemingway’s
description of it in “The Sun Also RIses”.

As we walked into town Doug and I were amazed by the number
of people out so early in the morning. Almost all were decked out in white bull
running outfits with red neck bandanas and a red scarf around their waists.
Even older ladies clearly not planning to get in the path of any bulls were
dressed similarly in white with red sweaters, hats, shoes, and other
accessories.

It didn’t take long until we figured out that people weren’t
up early to watch the bulls but rather that they had not finished the night’s
revelry. As we got to the old town (Casco Viejo) the streets were packed with
people stumbling around with liter bottles of beer and jugs of sangria, their
white outfits all soiled with dirt or wine stains . Bars were overflowing with
completely wasted drunk young people. The squares and streets were ankle deep
in rubbish – paper, plastic, glass – all dampened by the drizzle but still
reeking of urine, vomit, cigarette butts, and spilled beer - a total Bacchanal!

Now I’m all for getting good and drunk once in a while (or
even quite often), but the fact is that drunk people are not a lot of fun to be
around unless you’re drunk yourself. And this morning I was bright-eyed,
bushy-tailed, and stone-cold sober.

We scoped out a place among the crowds along the bulls’
rather short course through town and stood and waited for over an hour – packed
among people with cigarette smoke, body odor, and bad breath, every so often a
young vixen trying to cut her way in front of us. We held firm, their pathetic
little feminine whispers for mercy to be let through for a better view finding
absolutely no sympathy with me.

Meanwhile, drunk people were all around doing what drunk
people do – singing, chanting, climbing up on signs, guzzling more beer and
sangria, throwing things, yelling, getting into fights . Just as the crush of
the crowd was making me feel seriously claustrophobic, instructions for runners
down on the street below were blared out in multiple languages.

“Don’t poke fingers in bull’s eyes!”

“Don’t antagonize bulls!”

“If bull attacks you, play dead!”

There were a lot more, but I missed the remainder of the
instructions in the din of the noisy crowd. 
These seem pretty common sense to me and reminded me of why I was not
trying to run with the bulls.

Then at 8:00 A.M. sharp there’s a gunshot. The doors to the
corralitos which hold the bulls get opened. Then there was another sound blared
each time one of the bulls left its corralito. I could see a mass of people in
white and red down below, probably about 90% of them male (hard to tell),
running up the alley. I was snapping photos with my camera raised as high as I
could reach in hope something would come out . I had a few glimpses of the top a
two bull’s backs as they ran by. Then there was empty space until another 5 or
6 bulls ran by very fact, of which I got only the briefest glimpses.

Then all was quiet. That was it? What a disappointment! What a waste! 
I came all this way for that?

The crowd dispersed. My bro and I went into a bar for a
breakfast beer (or two or three) to watch TV news replays of the day’s bull
running, apparently broadcast live every morning of the festival throughout
Espana. Cool, I get to see what I came to see but couldn’t really see much of!

Grassy areas all over town and hallways, entrances, alcoves,
park benches were all quickly filled with passed out young people, members of
the international youth party hearty crowd as well as Spaniards used to not
getting to sleep until several hours after dawn on weekends. They outdoor ones
were mostly too wasted to notice the periodic drizzle moistening their red and
white outfits . Cleaning crews got to
work fast hosing down the streets and bulldozing the mountains of trash in
little Bobcats to make the town modestly presentable again if not as spic and
span as Spanish towns normally are on non-feast times.

Doug and I went to the bullring ticket office but were
unable to get tickets for the evening corrida (bullfight). We then went our
separate ways late morning, he to take a nap at the hostel and then do some
shopping, I eager to take in the festival’s cultural events around town.

My afternoon was actually very pleasant. The streets were
filled with Basque marching brass bands, followed by crowds of dancing drunk
people. There were Basque folk dancing groups (a style known in England as
Morris Dancing), an olive pit spitting contest, and Basque strength athletics
competitions. The Atlas Stone event in
Strongman competitions happens to be of Basque origin. On stages set up on the
outskirts of the old town, Spanish song and dance groups attracted a more
geriatric (or should I be more PC and use the word “mature”) crowd to watch the
Paso Doble. Food tents in the park
served regional Spanish delicacies. The atmosphere became truly festive and
pleasant.

I also stumbled upon a Basque separatist political
rally. It seemed quite socialist as well
as independence-seeking as they sang the Internationale and held up clenched
fists in unison . I’m neither a commie
nor a fascist, but I love seeing this political extremism – people who still
have passion for political causes while most of the world succumbed to wimpy
capitalistic liberal democracy. Stand up to the hegemony of liberal
democracy! Ha! I also don’t hold a view one way or another
about Basque or Catalan separatism.

Those breakfast beers wore off quickly and I was completely
sober by the time I met my bro for lunch around 3:00 in the afternoon. Doug,
though, had been laying into the sauce and was already half drunk. It didn’t
take much arm twisting for me to join in with him even though I was looking
forward to seeing some of the evening’s free cultural events around town –
parade, dances, concerts, maybe even wandering about down chugging from my own
personal jug of sangria. Doug hatched a plan for us to stay out until 4:00 A.M.
and catch a taxi back to our hostel/dorm where I’d go to sleep for a while nd
he’d grab his packed bag and continue on to the airport for his 6:00 A.M.
flight back to New York via Madrid.

Another bottle of wine, then a syrupy after dinner drink, a
pitcher of beer, then another syrupy sweet drink, then another pitcher of beer.
Doug kept ordering and ordering at the restaurant. Always being the frugal economist, I was
like, “I’m not paying for all this when we could be drinking big bottles of
beer from convenience stores on the cheap while walking around town!” I’m still a cheapskate even when drinking . Of
course, it was raining and walking around town would not have been much fun,
which was part of the reason we were holed up drinking in a bar.

“No worries, bro. I’ll get it!” he insisted. That Etxeko
goes down really smooth, though. Etxeko is a brand of Patxaran, the sweet
Basque herbal liqueur from Navarre I first fell in love with on my trip to
Barcelona in 2003. My brother concurs – maybe we have genetically similar taste
buds. In Spain it’s considered kind of a ladies’ sipping drink, so they look
kind of funny at you when two big dudes order Etxekos.

The skies cleared around 8:00 P.M. just as the sun was
getting low. I was eager to wander around town some as things might start
picking up. Doug, though, insisted on heading back to the hostel to get some
sleep and puked along the way, adding his contribution to the vomit rivers
running through the city streets. So much for a long night out in Pamplona for
San Fermin!

On the way back to the dorm/hostel, we repeated together the
chant of drunken young Spaniards in praise of alcohol – “Alcol, Alco-o-o-o-ol,
Alcol, Alcol, Alcol! Bienvenidos, blah, blah, blah, blah……blah, blah, blah,
blah, mi Corazon!”  I vaguely recall
getting lost in a park and encountering a dance taking place, not a performance
but a participatory dance . I think in my drunken state I asked a lady to dance
and got turned down. Hmmm, I wonder why!

Fortunately, my alarm went off around 4:00 A.M. to send my
bro off in time to the airport, or else he would have missed his flight home. I
left at the more civilized hour of 10:00 A.M. to go by bus to Zaragoza,
tip-toeing over and around the masses of sleeping/passed out people in filthy
white outfits with red trimmings sleeping in the Citadel park and the bus
station. What do they say – “Let sleeping drunks lie?”

San Fermin and the running of the bulls was somewhat of a
letdown for me after my expectations for it, but I’m glad I did it and can say
I’ve been. It’s pretty low on my “have to go back” list of events.