Kukuxumusu and Sanfermin

There were some people, demonstrating their farsightedness and intuition perhaps, who actually wore those historical and pioneering garments during the fiestas of that year. That was a time when originality in the Sanfermin souvenir business had not yet come into being, and Kukuxumusu, in spite of being a Basque word, sounded more like "something" Japanese. Due to their naivety and a lack of foresight, the three lads sold fewer tee shirts than they hoped, but The Drawing Factory had taken its first tentative steps, without having broken their necks in the process.

Kukuxumusu managed to hit the essential characteristics of Sanfermin right on the head. Like a child - and at the same time a faithful lover - The Drawing Factory allowed itself be seduced, like the fiesta, by concepts such as craziness, eccentricity, improvisation and universality, and above all, enjoyment and fun in its most spontaneous and extreme form. Sixteen years on and the conjugal alliance continues to enjoy perfect wellbeing. The productive love affair between Kukuxumusu and Sanfermin has not only not waned, but indeed, has become even more fervent. And this is due, above all, to the thousand five hundred stories that mark out this singular relationship.

The most visible part of this enduring alliance is the annual collection made for Sanfermin, but it is not the only one. Along the way, there are the two posters from Mikel Urmeneta -the creative director at Kukuxumusu- which have won the annual poster competition organized by the City Hall to announce the fiestas officially: the first one in 1990, and the other, just recently, in 2004, where he worked in collaboration with the Kukuxumusu fashion designer, Marta Coronado. Now also left behind are those "little differences" which arose with the City Hall about what kind of tee shirt drawings could, or could not, be made. There was the appearance of the first blue bulls, the very successful bandanas, the creation of the fictitious running of the bulls under the sea or in the air or even in the night. But above all, there remain all those drawings made for participation in the fiestas and which are part of the fiestas, to be enjoyed by those who wear them and by those who see them.

Each year, each Sanfermin since 1989, there has been a special Kukuxumusu tee shirt brought out for the fiestas to the point where now, the projected drawing in itself, is an indispensable icon of each edition of the Sanfermin fiestas. "Diurna-Nocturna", "Castiella", "Surfermin", "Fauna", "Beeencierro", etc. form a part of the Kukuxumusu contribution to the classic red and white Sanfermin gear for the fiestas. Sanfermin is the source for one of three annual collections which - summer and winter are the other two - originate from the weird minds of Mikel Urmeneta and his team of sketchers.

The new technologies have not been absent from this relationship. Sanfermin.com, the website created by Kukuxumusu in 1997, has more than two million visits per year. Its content is a must if you want to surf around Pamplona in the beginning of July. And sanfermin.com/TV, the first television channel about Sanfermin fiestas on the Internet, offers 24 hours of information daily as from July 2007. It will contain all the best images of the running of the bulls, all the updated news and all you need to know and see in the fiestas.

For all these reasons, and despite the fact that now the worldwide annual sales of Kukuxumusu tee shirts has reached the million mark and thus puts the Sanfermin theme in a lesser light, each Kukuxumusu shop will have its festival corner. In Estafeta Street, there is a year-round calendar clock placed above the Kukuxumusu shop which counts down the number of months, days and hours which remain for the fiestas to take off. This special calendar runs from July to July and the end of the year is celebrated on the 6th of July. And that is why Kukuxumusu does not celebrate Xmas but does celebrate Sanfermin.