American Life In The Summertime #25 - San Fermin

The first rocket is fired on the stroke of 8am and your heart pounds. There is now officially no way out and the street, which seemed so wide and spacious only the day before, now seems impossibly narrow and crowds in on you from both sides. You are questioning whether you feel so lucky now to have made the cut, because the rocket indicates that the gates to the corral have been opened and you are about to take part in the ancient tradition of the festival of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain: the encierro - The Running Of The Bulls.

Your carefully thought out strategy after watching yesterday's run from the comfortable balcony you had booked is immediately abandoned and replaced by one thought: RUN. A wave of people is surging past you with a look on their faces you have never seen before: more than fear, more than panic - it is pure terror. They are literally running for their lives and the hardest thing you have ever had to do in your life is fight the herd mentality that takes over and not run with them, as you wait, and wait, and wait for the bulls to reach you, because the idea is to run *with* the bulls, not 2 minutes in front of them or after they have passed. Then the throng of panicked runners becomes a flood and it becomes difficult to even stand your ground as suddenly the bulls are there, and you begin to run. For a while you are able to pace them, but eventually they begin to pull away and now you have to think: "Was that 4, or 5, or 6, or 12?". It was just a blur of black and tan. Released with the 6 fighting bulls that will be killed in that night's bullfight are 6 tame "herding" cattle who know the route and are there to provide a bigger pack to hopefully keep the fighting bulls on track and create a neat, tight group which will leave the corral, run pretty much a straight path right into the bullring at the other end of the run without getting distracted by any runners, and into the pens there with no incident. But the whole point is obviously that things don't always go to plan, and the herd can end up split, or one bull can become separated, or fall and get left behind, and this is when they are most dangerous. So now comes the hard part: you know there were less than 12 that just ran past (or you *think* there were less than 12, you were a little distracted), but there are way too many people still running behind you to see what's coming. How many was that? Are there any left? Where are they? Are they sticking to the middle of the road of have they found a line up the side right behind you, about to run you down? There are supposed to be a further series of rockets indicating when the last bull has reached the bullring, when they are all safely penned up etc, but in all the confusion and excitement the last thing you hear is a couple of fireworks. I still haven´t heard them. There is no way to know, so you just keep running.

You also run because you want to get inside the bullring at the end of the course. This is for 2 reasons: first, the idea is to run WITH the bulls - the doors to the bullring are not opened until the bulls are reasonably close, so anyone who has reached the end of the course long before the bulls even arrive is siphoned off amid much jeering, and the doors are closed as soon as the last bull is inside the ring (for obvious reasons), and so actually making it through the course and into the bullring is an indication that you have truly made your run with the bulls. And second, as a "reward" for getting into the bullring, once the bulls are safely penned, a series of young steers is released to create mayhem among the runners who made it inside (young steers, in this case, still representing roughly 200 kilos as opposed to the 500-600 kilos of the fighting bulls). This is your one chance to play matador with something that is a slightly lower chance of doing you some permanent damage, although further comedy is provided by the fact that you have to also negotiate a bunch of other jittery runners in the ring, and so someone is always the unlucky one to run out of space to dodge and become the newest horn ornament when you come face to face with the feisty future steak. Finally, after three minutes of intense fear and another half hour of comical evasion of the young steers, the event is over for another day and the runners start to pour out of the bullring, still pumped on adrenaline as they conduct their post mortems and talking REALLY REALLY FAST. You acquire your celebratory breakfast beer and, as you walk with great satisfaction back up the length of the course to reminisce on your successful run, it suddenly hits you: that was really, really stupid.

Of course, the festival of San Fermin is not all about trying to avoid being speared by some quality Spanish beef (indeed for some of the girls this appears to be the primary goal of attending the festival). There is also the Running Of The Nudes, a protest held each year by the animal rights group PETA the day before San Fermin starts, at which people appear nude to oppose the cruelty of bullfighting (not sure I understand the connection but who am I to question?). Not having anything else particularly to do the day before the festival started, myself and a few guys from the campsite had gone in to watch. As we were standing there, on a whim I turned to one of them and asked "Do you want to get involved?". He shrugged and said "Why not?" and so we approached one of the organisers. She immediately noticed our campsite wristbands (indicating "Festival Adventures San Fermin Running Of The Bulls 2009") and asked what they were for, and, in danger of having the entire plan fall over due to the hypocrisy of trying to join a protest about the very thing we were going to take part in ourselves the next day, I quickly answered with the first thing that came to mind: "Oh that's for breast cancer". Amazingly, this worked, and, our bona fides as passionate supporters of animal rights and womens' issues established, we were issued with the regulation black underwear and left to nude up with the rest of the group. I must say that I have never heard of a bright fluorescent orange wristband indicating support for breast cancer but I was hoping that the Australian accent would confuse, distract and charm her long enough from the fact that I was talking complete nonsense for me to see her boobs (this appears to be a pretty standard backpacker strategy anyway).

In previous years the Running Of The Nudes involved the protesters walking the entire length of the encierro course nude, and this is what I was expecting when we turned up, however it appears this year they had a new strategy, which was to lie out front of Pamplona town hall for an hour, with plenty of opportunity for media photos to promote their cause. Oh, and to have fake blood poured all over them and spears sticking out of their backs to indicate the cruelty of bullfighting. Have to say - was not expecting the fake blood. And as I had not even planned to participate, I had nothing to change back into after the protest, and so, late on the afternoon before the opening day of San Fermin I was to be seen walking back into the campsite in front of 2,000 festival attendees wearing only black underwear and completely red from thickly congealed fake blood. This red colour remained for the entire 5 days I was at San Fermin, especially the bits that, say, could not be scrubbed too hard, although it would have been interesting to see the reaction had I found company for the evening: "Oh no, that's just fake blood from when I lied my way onto an animal rights protest. Please - carry on".

All in all, San Fermin - especially the opening day - is the craziest thing I have ever seen. People are liberally doused with champagne, sangria, beer, water, a weird bright yellow concoction of egg and flour - for the entire day. 15 year olds are spraying middle aged couples and both laugh. The local Spanish absolutely *LOVE* it and it was good to see a festival not yet completely taken over by boorish drunk Australian Fanatics tour groups. The Spanish love it so much that, on the day after the festival ends, the locals, refusing to accept that it is over for another year, have started yet another tradition of the Running Of The Bus, in which they step out in front of the 8am bus up the street on which the encierro is run, and run up the road in front of THAT. The history of the encierro is equally crazy: before barricades were erected along the bullrun, the locals used to simply stand along the sides of the road holding up blankets - blankets - to define the course, hide themselves and stop the bulls running off into the wider city. Controversy remains about bullfighting due to the killing of the bulls at the end of the fight, and the general misery they suffer even without an organised bullfight: on the bus from France into Spain they played a video showing bulls being released into the centre of random Spanish towns to then be tormented by people running past, trying to pull their tail, zooming past with 5 guys piled onto a quad bike etc...all set to jaunty Spanish music. However, to their credit, the Spanish have also invented "fairer" methods of fighting a bull, including where a bunch of guys line up single file and try to stop the charging bull simply by having it run into enough of them that they all get accordioned together and it finally stops. This presents a much more amusing image on the video as the first guy in line stands there like a condemned man waiting to get absolutely drilled while his brave amigos hide behind him taking progressively smaller and smaller hits until the bull finally runs out steam. Crazy.

I'll leave you now with my favourite story from San Fermin 2009. When I watched the first bull run from the balcony, about half an hour before the bulls are released the police go through and thin out the majority of the crowd lined up to run, otherwise the street would literally be a solid wall of people from beginning to end and nobody would be running anywhere. So for safety reasons, almost three quarters of the potential runners are eliminated before the run starts. This happens in bulk with entire sections of the street simply sectioned off and tossed out at random, and it happened in the street right below our balcony. So, until 5 minutes before the bulls were released, the entire street below our balcony was completely empty in both directions. Then the police remove the barricades holding back the lucky (?) ones left, and they can take up their positions wherever they want along the course. So there we were, 5 minutes to 8, not a soul in sight on the street, all the shops barricaded up with corrugated iron roller doors in preparation for the encierro, when the shopkeeper on the street opposite our balcony opens his door and walks out. He is carrying a tray of paint and a long roller, and - this is just before the first bull run of the year is about to run right past his door, remember - proceeds to completely paint his roller door from top to bottom. After giving it a thorough coating, he picks up his paint and roller and, satisfied, goes back inside. About 30 seconds later the runners are released, the rocket is fired, and the run surges past. Crazy. 'Til next time: take care of yourselves (this means *NOT* running with bulls!).....and each other.