History

The event has always been contentious and from the very beginning it has always had a marked character of confrontation with City Hall.

However, contentious does not necessarily mean progressive here. In fact, it was a staunch traditionalist, Ignacio Baleztena, who organized and started up the riau-riau back in 1914, as a means of exasperating the non-traditional city councilors without opening attacking them. The idea of the riau riau is to obstruct the visit that the city councilors make on the eve of San Fermin, to the church of San Lorenzo, where the figure of the saint lies. This is done by dancing in front of the City Hall brass band and thus obstructing their advance along the street. It did not matter what kind of political party was in power in City Hall. All of them suffered the same obstruction. There were several attempts to prohibit it: In 1927 the Mayor, Demetrio Martínez de Azagra tried to finish it off as it was an “inconvenient event” that was simply “a manifestation of vulgarity”. But all in vain. Some years later the prohibition was repeated, but with the same unachievable result.

Between 1932 and 1936, with the arrival of the Republic State, the City Hall councilors did not go in a formal act to the church and so there was no riau-riau during those years. Since 1965, the time it took to cover the distance became much longer. In fact this was the whole point of the riau-riau, to make it as long as possible to test the patience of City Hall. In 1972 it was suspended for the first time, because after some 45 minutes the councilors had only advanced a few steps. In 1980, the council took five hours and twenty-five minutes to cover the distance which can normally be walked in about five minutes. Since then it used to be suspended almost every year and in 1990, it was definitively suspended as an official event of the Sanfermin program.