Pamplona

‘The fighting bull is to the domestic bull as the wolf is to the dog.’ -- Ernest Hemingway in Death In The Afternoon. The festival of San Fermín in Pamplona, northern Spain started at 12:00 noon on Sunday the 6th July this year with the biggest street party on the planet. At a party so big you would not think it unusual for at least a number of people to have the same outfit on, except at this one, it was unusual to have anything else on. Standard dress code being all in white with a red sash around the waist, red scarf around the neck or head, or both, and armed with as much red wine and Sangria as you could lay your hands on. The purpose of the latter was not only to get extremely pissed, but also to, without prejudice, completely soak everyone that came within range. For best results we quickly armed ourselves with wine skins which allowed for greater distance and accuracy whilst achieving minimal wastage. The skins were also pretty handy for squirting drink directly into one another’s mouths. It seemed pretty insane that in the very early hours of the very next day we would be running through these very same narrow cobbled streets in our hundreds with 6 x 2000 pound fighting bulls bearing down upon us, and yet that was precisely the purpose of our visit, and of the festivities. Indeed these festivities were set to run for eight straight days, with six new fighting bulls being run through the streets in the early hours of each morning. Having made the tremendous effort to raise 18 lads with stupendous hangovers at 5:00am, get them onto a public bus and back into the thick of it by 6:00am, we then wrongly assumed that because the bulls did not run until 8:00am, we had time for some hangover aversion strategies at the sight of the first bar. Unfortunately this allowed for us to be somewhat overtaken by it all, we were after all, new to it. By the time we got down to the middle of the course at Mercaderes, at about 7:00am, there was no longer enough time to even see the course, let alone walk it, the sea of spectators already having gathered swamped the 6 foot high fences and it became impossible to get our bearings. We needed to find a gap in the fence and get on course and quickly, we knew that the start of the course was to our left and the finish to our right, we had no idea where we actually were at the time though, and no idea where we were going. Eight of us made a break for it and split, there was no time to dither, we’d come a long way to do this, this was to be it. Although we’d been told it was very dangerous to start the run from the start of the course as a first time runner, we figured that it might be our best and possibly only option to slip in at the Town Hall Square near the start. Obviously we could not simply run down towards the start on the course, nor alongside the course, it was completely blocked, we had to run in the general direction of the start, through the windy backstreets strewn with bottles, rubbish, cups and other drinking paraphernalia, through the gaggles of drunken locals singing, dancing, clapping and shouting as we parted them at speed. It was a remarkable experience in itself really, breathing hard, busting out the booze in beads, watching the rhythm of the feet of my friends around me, all with our single goal, to get me on course. All the while there was a sense of urgency and concern which mixed in our minds with the fear and anticipation of what might happen if we were successful. Eventually we got there, it was worse than we could have imagined, the edges of the course were twenty people deep with spectators; it was essentially a crush, not only that, but there were now two sets of fences, an outer fence, lined with people sat on top or holding on below, and an inner fence which lined the course, in the middle of the two fences were the Guardia Civil with guns and batons, and they weren’t shy when it came to deploying the batons. Although for months I had been very fearful at the prospect of running with the bulls, (especially after speaking to various travel insurance companies, who, much to the amusement of my colleagues in the office, either went very quiet on the end of the line, or just started laughing at the prospect of insuring me), when faced with the prospect of not being able to run, there was nothing on earth I would rather have done. I didn’t care who the people were blocking my way, I ploughed through them and made it to a 6 foot tall gate which joined the course fencing to the side of a house that faced the course. There were some people going over this gated section, I was elated, and with the help of those who stood right up against it, I got a bunk over the top, straight into the arms of angry police. I pleaded with the cops; I was on my stag do, I’d come a long way, I was soba and fit. I heard one of them say, ‘Inglish’ and point in the opposite direction to the course, I was bundled back over the fence and re-united with the lads. Unperturbed we again set off running, this time towards the bull ring, perhaps there would be somewhere we could sneak in at the end, just to say we had done it, if only for the last few metres, it had to be worth a go, how far could it be, the course was only 850 metres long and took only four and a half minutes to complete. Off we set, back the way we had come and before long were met by the rest of the guys coming towards us from Mercaderes, we touched base with them and a couple more joined our unrelenting quest to gain access. We ran through the busy streets, the excitement and atmosphere building, there was not much time. The situation remained the same all the way down to the bull ring where the event finished, perhaps if we went round the back of the bullring and onto the far side of the course, it might be less busy, two of the lads at this point took a punt on the ticketed gates and went into the ring, while the rest of us peeled off around the back of it and into a park below. My heart sank as the first rocket went off, that was it - the runners were away. We made it to Telefónica, which makes up the final straight of the course and accepted that we were spectators, you could sense the numbers of runners coming through, they were running quite quickly, there was the faint sound of feet and lots of heads, knees and ankles flying past the gaps in the crowds. The second rocket went off and the pace lifted and the crowd anticipated; the bulls were on the run. In what seemed like no time, the sound of the excitement, jeers, ooh’s and ah’s moving along the line of crowds flanking the course could be heard approaching like a Mexican wave, then came the cowbells clanging from around the necks of the steers that led the bulls, and finally the shrill of the runners as the bulls approached and then past them. I caught a glimpse of an eye and a horn; it was all over, the crowds dissipated and the fences were dismantled and removed, daily life was underway. All of the lads were due to be fly back at lunchtime the next day, with the coach leaving the hotel at midday, the intention therefore had always been to run with the bulls on the first morning, party all day and most of the night thereafter whilst being high on adrenalin and life, then sleep in, have a late breakfast and then get everybody on their way. The group collective had agreed that to run with the bulls on the second morning following such a sustained period of debauchery would not be sensible, however, having failed to run on the first morning, and fuelled with the bravado of drink, plans changed. I have no idea how I woke that morning, just after 5:00am, only hours after going to bed full of beer and Sangria, it happened though, and I know now it was meant to be. I immediately knocked on next door and raised my brother who woke my dad and Pete, the Mazurek brothers, Mazza and Snide then appeared, I don’t know whether from my room or another, or one from each, but any further knocking only produced one more man, Rich, the seven of us then made the first bus in and headed straight for the course. Pete was carrying a broken foot and my old man is old, so they went on to watch from the bull ring. The rest of us, once again headed for the middle of the course at Mercaderes, it was still just a street, although the shop doorways and lower floor windows had metal covers across them, so there was nowhere to hide. There were vehicles coming down with water tanks and pressure hoses cleaning off the Sangria. The only other folk around were runners, TV crews and journalists, oh and people who had been out all night, either collapsed on benches, or in the case of my old Uni buddies, Ross and Mathias, standing against a shop front full of stories, clutching photographic evidence and raring to go. Not only had Ross been ridden by a Spanish girl in the WC of a nearby Tavern minutes after meeting her, Mathias had his first tattoo, a bull no less on his shoulder! Not to be outdone, or more to do with the fact that I couldn’t find any of my clothes, I remained dressed in what I had slept in, a size 8 white cropped top with a raging bull on the front of it, acquired on my behalf as the Stag, they called it the Freddie Mercury look you know. I suppose it was an improvement on being dressed as an Arab with full regalia including a white robe and red head gear, as I had been on the first day, try explaining that to the locals as you guzzle red wine, there must be many hundreds of photographs out there of me in that gear soaked in vino. We were all pretty nervous, but spirits were high having hooked up with Ross and Mathias. That seed of nerves did sprout and flower though, and I would go so far as to say that some were soon verging on scared. We had all seen the video footage from the previous day, and worse still the internet footage over the years, this was not for the faint hearted, we knew only too well that people had died doing what we were about to do, 15 to be precise since 1910, although the tradition had been ongoing since the fourteenth century. Mazza was particularly under pressure having been to a stag do two weeks earlier where at three O’clock in the morning, the lad whose shoulders he was being carried on fell forward, Mazza had landed on his face slicing his chin off, his wife Rach had therefore issued a very clear warning before we came away that he was a father of two and that if she discovered he had run with the bulls then she would divorce him. Now, as if a goring isn’t already bad enough, it is also the kind of injury that cannot be blamed on anything else other than being stabbed by a bull’s horn, so not only might Mazza receive a serious injury, if he were to live through it, then he would be entering a world of shit. It didn’t end there, during the night Mazza had been responsible for carrying James home, whilst doing so James had fallen pulling them both to the ground, Mazza came off worse hitting his eye on a curb resulting in a brilliant shiner, and they say things happen in three’s. It was an unusual situation to be in with your friends as the adrenalin started to secrete into the blood, and the huge camera on the corner behind us swept round from its view down Santa Domingo, over our heads and onto Dead Man’s Corner. Some of the lads repetitively asked questions about the plan, the course and what to expect, the same questions over and over, others unnerved me slightly by being completely normal, as though in a pub back home on a Thursday night or being more concerned about breakfast. Personally I didn’t like the waiting around; I’ve never been one for socialising with a hangover unless I have a drink in my hand. The large wooden posts laid out on the street started to be fixed into the permanent metal slots which were engineered into the road for this annual event, within minutes a fence had been erected around us, it was a basic fence, about eight feet high with two very thick heavy beams going between each set of posts, there were large gaps to climb through the fence, or onto it, or over it, alas it only had to keep unusually large animals contained, whilst allowing large numbers of spectators to sit on it and hang of it. It wasn’t until these spectators started to arrive in their hundreds almost instantaneously that you realised there was no going back, we were now hemmed in by the crowds, in the eye of the storm, or more accurately, the calm before the storm as the minute hand past over the twelve and took us into the last hour. There were more runners about too by this time, but still not that many where we were. We’d read that it was wise to start further down the course if it was your first time, hence our decision to start at the midway point. Dead Man’s Corner was just in front of us, a ninety degree right hander onto a long narrow straight lined with shop fronts known as Estafeta Street, the plan was to be round Dead Man’s Corner before the bulls had even been released, and if that were not possible, then to stick to the inside of the corner because the bulls hit is at speed and often slid wide on the wet cobbles, the cobbles having not long before been washed down. With only thirty minutes to go a wall of police started working their way up behind us, they were sweeping their way up the course, getting people to bunch up and move forward. At first we thought they were just expelling any drunks or other liabilities from the crop of runners, one poor young man was having his head repetitively rammed into a fencepost as they violently went about ejecting him from the course. Mazza and Snide had already set off in front to scout Estafeta Street, I think the standing around was getting their nerves jangling, from then on they were missing in action. As we rounded Dead Man’s Corner we took the view that perhaps the cops wanted people to start in certain positions, strategically spreading people out across the course so as to avoid any crushes. By the time we were half way down Estafeta Street though, we realised that the course was actually being swept clear ahead of the run and that we were on the wrong side of the police sweep, we would have to get off the course and run back round to the start if we wanted to run, it was déjà vu, but this time, we had come so far psychologically as well, to not run would have been torturous, so we bolted, down a side street, only this time on the far side of the course that took us down a long narrow hill and away from the action. We took the first left that we could and then another left and back up towards Town Hall Square, we ran as fast and as hard as we could, and as we approached the crowds again, saw a gap in the lower part of the fence, we had nothing to lose, through we went two at a time, emerging at the most dangerous place we could, the start line. We worked our way up a little, although it was very tightly packed with runners and there was only so far we could get before the road was blocked by more police just ahead of the first left hand corner above which the large television camera was swiveling. There was by now no maneuverability at all, there literally was no going anywhere, we found ourselves huddled in together right in the middle of the road, right in the path of the bulls with an awful lot of runners rammed in all around us, the relative safety of the edges was so near and yet so far. I was by this time so close to myself that I could smell my own perspiration without making any effort to, this was unusual - I could smell my own fear. I could not however smell the fear of my brother straight in front of me, his fear no doubt boxed off and categorised while he concentrated on the practicalities of the situation, nor of Mathias who was so often alongside me through the thick and thin of some of my most perilous times, ‘I always have a good time with you Ad,’ nor of Ross who made the whole thing look like a James Bond movie with a young well dressed Dolph Lundgren playing Bond, and nor of Rich, Rich being Rich was talking, I believe to an American lad who’d done the tradition some five or six times before, and who’s tales were making us all feel a little uneasy I’m sure. The first rocket went up and we began to move, the crowd disbursed a little as we moved into space and the pace lifted rather rapidly. We went with it, sticking together as best we could with a plan to regroup and wait for the second rocket once round Dead Man’s Corner at the head of the long straight of Estafeta, after all, we wanted to run at least some of the way once the bulls were on course. It was not that easy to find each other nor to stick together, we were a Rich down at Estafeta, the camera was going up and down a zip line above our heads, it ran along the length of the whole street, we were all familiar with the iconic footage this particular camera caught of the event, it also beamed out live on Spanish television every morning of the Fermín. The second rocket went up; there was a moment of quiet followed by blind panic and fear on a grand scale, I imagined it would be pretty similar being in a public place after an act of terrorism. We made our way up Estafeta as gradually as we could, although it was not easy at all, it was impossible just to stay still against a building or wedged into a blocked off doorway, not only were there Guardia Civil whacking people with big sticks to ensure they kept moving, there were also waves of people moving on mass in fear for their lives. In a situation like that it’s every man for himself, all manors go out of the window, it was like a rugby maul going off in a mosh pit along both sides of the entire length of street. It made staying together very difficult indeed, although a good effort was made for the first forty meters or so, during which we were able to re-group approximately every ten metres. When we did stop for a moment we all found ourselves on tips toes, stretching like Meerkats to see what was coming, all sense of time disappears and so you have no idea when the bulls might be upon you. In fact the main reason you get bashed around so much is because everybody is running for their lives in a forward direction whilst looking backwards. A fit adrenalin fuelled human can be a force to be reckoned with, hundreds of them is really something else. About half way down Estafeta I’d lost everybody and the situation was unrelenting, the bulls had been fast through the first section of the course, although it had seemed like an eternity, they were by now on Dead Man’s Corner, I could hear them coming, the cow bells on the steers that lead them through the mayhem were getting closer, the noises from excited and terrified runners came with them. They were upon me, I was an animal width away and moving, everything slowed, the whole experience just lapsed into slow motion, there was a calmness as my eyes were transfixed on the sticks of the handlers bobbing through, then on the sharp tall horns of the giant steers, I glided out of their way to my right and then for a moment I could not process my senses quickly enough, blinded by the purest sense of fear. When my vision caught up with me, to my left were the fighting bulls, tiring a little but in all their snorting ferocious shining wayward splaying glory, charging along, totally unpredictable, it was magnificent. To have felt true fear, but also respect and then elation within such a short space of time was really quite something, but to truly appreciate these feelings, the build-up, the anticipation, the psychological mind games of the hours before, all had played a key role in their crowning glory. You never know whether a bull or bulls may have been separated from the herd at any point along the course and so I still had my wits about me down through Telefónica, especially just before you go through the bottle neck that is the entrance of the bullring, I hadn’t realised at this point but the third and fourth rockets sounding across the town were signals that all of the herd had entered the bullring and its corral respectively, marking the end of the event. I also hadn’t realised that once a certain number of runners had entered the bullring the gate would be closed, Gus, Mathias, Ross and Rich, by that time all alive and well, never made it in. At the time I had thought the old man and Pete might be in the stalls somewhere, it turned out they’d been watching on Telefónica and filming me come past. Relieved and buzzing my tits off I wondered around the bullring looking up for them, hoping I might also bump into one of the lads whilst I regained my breath, my composure, and soaked up the splendid atmosphere from within the ring. Of course I didn’t for a second cotton on that yes, I was in the ring, whilst there were thousands of paying customers, who’d paid for some entertainment, all sitting in the safety of their seats around that ring, watching it, waiting to be entertained, that entertainment was us, and none of us knew it. Suddenly a crowd of a hundred people parted instantly like iron filings in an experiment with magnets. I and those beside me yet to part were left face to face with a fresh young fighting bull. He was light brown and stood tall with his head up as he cantered waywardly towards me at surprising speed, I got a terrible shock and I don’t think I’ve ever moved quite so fast in my life, luckily I split right as he was distracted and went left, otherwise I’m sure he would have caught and tossed me on his flattered horns. Our main advantage was sheer numbers, there must have been a couple of hundred people in the ring, and when moving as one he couldn’t single anybody out very easily, although he did launch his fair share of folk when they lost their footing or got a bit too cocky. It took me a few minutes of desperately trying to stay within the movements of the crowd to avert further eye contact with the bull to realise that people were scaling the five foot fence that surrounded the ring in order to make their escape. The problem was, a huge number of people then had the same idea, and you could only scale the area of fence where there was no bull, which meant that area was deep with people trying to escape and of course, the next port of call for the angry young bull. I was eventually given a bunk over by a young lady, she asked me if I’d had enough, I agreed that I had, I told her that I had a young daughter at home, she laughed and gave me a bunk, my legs went over my head and by the time I popped back up in safety, my remaining compadres were all on the other side of the ring again. I left the amphitheatre having lived the history. I knew the six bulls we had run with would be fought and killed that day, I did not wish to see that, I never had. Though I appreciate artistry, for me the experience was all about man and beast, and maybe some rolled up newspaper. At least on the outside of the bullring the only one who ends up dead is the man. It was also about friendship, and I needed to know everybody was okay, I needed a beer.