Some books to snuggle up with during Winterlude
View from the bandstand in the Plaza del Castillo.
Well, it’s all over now, but as this article was originally written for the Christmas period, (but los locos de Kuku couldn’t squeeze it in), I’ve decided to keep the Christmas and snow theme whilst changing a couple of things here and there. But just because Christmas is over it doesn’t mean it’s spirit has to be…and let’s face it for us guiris, with the arrival of January 1st we are given one of the best presents you can have – the “Escalera” and the countdown this year to, yup, San Thirteen! And we get the same present on the same date every year…and it’s always brilliant.
So, although it’s done and dusted for another year, Christmas is such a colourful time, with all the decorations put up at home and around the town and of course the Christmas trees and the bright lights shining their festive fluorescence over us. And when it’s snowing and everything is covered in white, a town develops its own special kind of magical beauty, and Pamplona is no different. For those of us that love the place during fiesta time it has its own unique, crazy and yes, surreal nature. But if you fast forward five months or so, that magic is still there, and it’s still fiesta time, all be it with a Yuletide jingle tinge. And when it snows, well, like most cities when it snows the beauty is all the more ethereal and yes, spiritual.
Sometimes, black and white looks beautiful.And if you’ve ever seen the city at night, blanketed and tucked up in snow, with the Christmas window displays in the shops lighting up the streets with that warm glowing haze that only seems to happen during the festive season, while the plazas and streets shimmer from the illuminations hanging overhead…well, you’ll know just how pretty it can be. Add to that the fact that the Spanish don’t give their presents out until January 6th and you can understand why for some of us who have been there at Christmas time find it is hard to end the festive season on New Years Day. Me included, as I’ve just this week sent out a couple of things for the Spanish present giving day.
I’ve been in Pamplona many a time in winter, and if you can imagine how beautiful the town looks under snow, just imagine what the rest of Navarra looks like. Wow.
The Snow Hall.So as we’ve just had Christmas and it’s been a time of gifts I thought I’d run through a few books that could make a great present for someone, especially if they’re Sanfermineros, but also if they love Spain or indeed just love books. Many of us know some of the fiesta and Pamplona or Navarra related books, so I’m going to lump a few of my favourites together here. Some are on Amazon, some are not, so I’m going to start with a couple of my favourite Pamplona bookshops where these books are available. It’s only fair too that I can only comment on books that I have read, so if there is anything new out there that is Pamplona themed (and there is!) I’m sorry but I can’t write about it until I’ve read it.
But as we countdown the months before fiesta engulfs us again, and you fancy feeding your addiction with some reading matter, here are just a few ideas.
La Casa del Libro
The famous (well, ‘tis to me!) bookshop owned by Carmelo Butini Etxarte.I have two favourite shops in the old town, and the one above is probably the establishment I visit most in all Pamplona, (at least amongst those that don’t serve alcohol) if only to get my daily paper. The other one is also a bookshop, a real little goldmine of literary treasure, and I’ll come to it in a minute.
There are so many people who must know Carmelo, the owner and he, poor fellow, must know everyone. His bookshop, which also sells newspapers and magazines is of course well known and very popular amongst the locals. It is also located in the perfect place, right off the old main square, smack bang and bull-thwacked wallop on the last street in the old town before the bulls turn into the slope that brings them down into the bullring.
Yup, it’s on the Estafeta. There are many much larger bookshops in Pamplona with a much wider range too of course, but if it’s books about the town or fiesta you’re after or just the international press, Carmelo’s your man. He doesn’t just get the ordinary tourists who pass through, but also the fiesta ones, the Hemingway ones, and of course the pilgrims on the road to Santiago de Compostela.
The shop has its own little story behind it too. It has always been in his family, and was first opened in 1943…but not on Estafeta, but on Eslava Street. It then moved to another spot on the Estafeta before finally finding its present spot. Originally it was a place to swop and hire books and novellas, along with selling newspapers. This was the time of the dictator General Franco of course, so his grandfather Benito also provided a rather (by necessity!) clandestine service providing copies of various prohibited publications. This had to remain a secret from the police of course as if they were denounced there was the certainty of at least arrest and probably detention. It was a dangerous game, and they weren’t the only ones playing it.
Many years later, in 2007 I think, at one of the book fairs, La Casa del Libro was awarded a diploma, along with some other book shops, for their part in “la lucha clandestina anti-frankista.” I’m sure you can work it out, but it means “the clandestine fight against Franco.”
Abarzuza
Abarzuza, a little goldmine of a bookshop.Another top bookshop, bigger but still quite small but with all of the fiesta books of course, is Abarzuza. This shop is also on the bull run, about two thirds of the way up from the corrals that signify the start of the encierro on la Cuesta de Santo Domingo. Most of the books I’m going to mention are available at these two shops, but also of course at other Pamplona bookshops like Libreria Gomez, Elkar, and Auzolan.
And so to the books. I am going to leave out for obvious reasons as they are famous, Ernest Hemingway’s “Fiesta/The Sun Also Rises” and James Michener’s “The Drifters” (which I mentioned last month and a few other times previously, too) and concentrate on a couple of others. And I’m going to start with Pamplona’s very own Ramon Herrera Torres, and a book he signed for me when he very kindly agreed to meet me a couple of years ago.
Carnaval de Ladrones. (Carnival of Thieves). A book about a film…His speciality is the cinema, and I couldn’t believe it when I read in one of the local newspapers in July 2010 that there was a writer from Pamplona who had written a book about a film I had long been looking for. Way back in the early 1970’s I’d seen on television a film about a robbery in a town that ran bulls, but it didn’t really register with me until I saw on the BBC news the grainy black and white footage of the various tragic runs in the mid-seventies when people lost their lives, and also when I read finally read “The Drifters.”
A paperback copy of “Caper” that I have.The film itself wasn’t that great but it was filmed towards the end of the sixties in Pamplona and during the fiesta, so it is a unique record of parts of fiesta at that time…and captured in colour. It’s a big easy book to read and written in four languages with a mountain of photos and press clippings, and if you can get hold of a second hand copy of the original book, “The Caper of the Golden Bulls” by William McGiven, and there are lots of copies out there for sale on the net, well, it makes the perfect companion of course to Ramon’s book. And McGiven’s “Caper” is a fun book, too. Yes a poetic licence or three are taken, but I hope you just enjoy the story for what it is.
Fiesta. Ramón Herrera Torres. Two more of Sr. Herrera’s books, with the writer in the bottom photo.
Two other books of his I have are the above two, again very much in the same style. They don’t take very long to read but add perfectly to one side of fiesta that appears to be rather under represented, that of Pamplona on film. The book on the left is all about the 1957 film of the book, starring Tyrone Power, Ava Gardner and Errol Flynn, while 850 Meters of Celuloide cleverly mixes the length of the bull run with a brief look at various films that Pamplona featured in, starting with one from 1926 and ending up with last years Bollywood buddy film.
Oh, and the film Carnival of Thieves? Yes, I now have a copy…
It’s all in the title.
Jim Hollander is not a man I know too well at all, he must have managed to escape me one way or another way too easily over the years, (or just decided he didn’t need to know the guy who occasionally slept with the gypsies in the square…sensible fellow) but he is a well known fiesta man, international photographer, and creator of the above book. It’s a beautiful book, a top quality and heavy tome full of some of his photographs taken during fiesta along with the words of all sorts of people to accompany them.
It’s pretty much a self explanatory book but just make sure that the coffee table you put it on is well made. Also, if having just bought it you’re flying on one of those winged cattle trucks that we seemed to be forced to fly now, that take you to a city nowhere near the one that you want to go to, it might be an idea to check your baggage weight allowance before you check in…
“Into The Arena”…and into Spain, deep inside to it’s beating, pumping, enigmatic heart.Ah, now, “Into The Arena”…um…I didn’t like it very much, actually…hang on a minute, who writes this stuff? Oh yeah, I do…to tell the truth, I loved this book and can only direct you to the piece I wrote on it last year for these pages, which you can click onto here: “INTO THE ARENA” by ALEXANDER FISKE-HARRISON
Suffice to say, whatever your views on bullfighting, this is a wonderful book, well written and a worthy addition to all those books on Spain, many of which I have read, and also no doubt a perfect addition to all those books on bullfighting…many of which I haven’t!
It was short listed for the prestigious William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2011 (now is not the time to talk about “is bullfighting a sport?” – of course it isn’t), the point is, that particular award uses the word “sport” very loosely, and if you have made it to the final six (or seven as it was last year) well, just think of it as similar to being nominated for an Oskar. For my part, it could well have been nominated as a travel book or a history book as well as a “sports” book…it covers a lot. I may know the author now but I loved the book before I even knew him, so my review is written with total honesty.
A book written by a man who knows.
I know everything is available, sadly, at the click of a mouse, but for those who prefer the old fashioned way and like to read something made from a tree (thanks, trees, mankind owes you), then Ray Mouton’s book about Pamplona and San Fermin is just about the perfect way to learn about the city and it’s extraordinary fiesta.
Along with all the info on the place and the peñas and the partying and running, and a whole lot more, he also writes about some of the characters who came to Pamplona and got sucked into the magic of it all and one way or another made a name for themselves or just came back for more, year after year.
Quite simply, it more or less says it all.
The ultimate guide.Finally, I have to mention the book above. It used to be available in, I think, four languages, and it really is the ultimate San Fermin guide. It first came out I think about 20 years ago, and in the those far off computerless days (oh! deep joy – and, okay, computers did exist then but they were made out of wood)) it was the only book that I could find that more or less explained simply everything, literally an A – Z of fiesta, from arrival to zzzleeping………..Talking of sleeping, or at least resting, especially after a gentle afternoon’s shopping in the wonderful world of books, all that’s needed to round it off is nice drink in a warm bar. Like this one perhaps…
El Caballo Blanco…under snow, so most definitely The White Horse.
That’s all folks, until next month. There are of course many more books out there, a lot that are out of print, and I shall get around to some of those one day. Those mad, sorry, I mean kind folks at Kukuxumusu want me to carry on my plagiarising and stealing from other better, more informed and way more intellectual sources this year and continue with my wandering, meandering, waffling scribbles, so until then I’ll leave you with this video to wet the appetite of the bull running mozos out there. But be warned: it’s not for children and is very much “the bull’s revenge.” It’s not great quality either…a good thing, judging by the content. Happy New Year, Feliz Año Nuevo eta Urte Berri On!
