John Patrick Hemingway receives the award of Guiri del Año Sanfermin 2011

10/07/2011. Kukuxumusu awards the North-American writer and celebrates Guiri Day by paying homage to all the foreigners that visit Sanfermin

Kukuxumusu today, the 10th of July, celebrates Guiri Day, a day of homage to all their foreign visitors, and it has done so by handing over the VIII Guiri del Año Award to the North-American writer, John Patrick Hemingway, grandson of Nobel Prizewinner, Ernest Hemingway, who died exactly fifty years ago.

The award was handed over at the Europa Restaurant at a special celebratory meal which was attended by most of the previous winners of this award, and by a representative group from the Kukuxumusu firm, headed by its three founder-members, Mikel Urmeneta, Koldo Aiestaran and Gonzalo Domínguez de Bidaurreta and accompanied by the popular Mister Testis.

Several of the previous winners
Among the guests were several of the previous winners: Frank Taylor (2009) and his wife, Sheila; Lars Ingvar Junfefors (2006) along with his son and a Swedish friend; Chiyoshi Sugawara (2010), accompanied by a friend from Navarra, Charo Martínez; Lore Monnig (2005), Manfred Walloschke (2007) and his wife Isabel Aguirre and Massaoud Sbai el Idrissi (2008). Carmen Margarita Alicea (2004) absent from Sanfermin this year had to excuse her presence.

After the award, an emotinated John P. Hemingway appreciated the gift and said he was happy of participate in "a party that, despite the grouping of lot of people very with very different ideas, it preserves the values ​​of peace and friendship". Then an exchange of gifts took place. The most emotional was the one of Chiyoshi Sugawara, a T-shirt in which Kukuxumusu workers had written support messages for Japan, affected by an earthquake in March.

Since 1997
Kukuxumusu has been organizing Guiri Day since 1997. The objective, is to pay acknowledgement to all those foreign visitors who come to Pamplona during Sanfermin and who, by their presence, give a universal character to the fiesta. In spite of the fact that the presence of the foreigner has been much malinged over the years, for Kukuxumusu ethe foreigners present an essential element of the fiestas and they have contributed decisively in making Sanfermin what it is today.

In 2004, with the same spirit as now the award of Guiri del Año was first conceded when it went to the Puerto Rican woman, Carmen Margarita Alicea, who now resides in Australia. Ever since then the award has been conceded successively each year without fail.

To see all the previous winners, here.