by Tim Pinks

(This was written just before fiesta)

Meanwhile…

Well… we’re nearly there, aren’t we? For those of us lucky enough and if we actually make it, the long wait is over, July is upon us and the next and last step on the Escalera will find us submerged deep in fiesta. It’s the exact opposite of the “Pobre-De-Mi.” It’s the “Oh-Lucky-Us.” This months San Ferscribblings start, as its the 25th anniversary, with something about one of the classic runs of recent decades, ends with the usual video clip I like to put in, and includes, for those that remember from a wee while back, the thing about a lion on the streets of Pamplona. Oh yes, only in Pamplona …

Continue reading…

Part One.

That great Sanferminero, Bomber, who so prematurely passed away long before his time this February, used to say, “Pamplona is a gift.” Thank you Bomber, because that so sweetly and simply sums up some of what this beautiful town and its inhabitants and fiesta mean to me. I used the same title but in Spanish for an article that was published in the Diario de Navarra newspaper on the 4th of April – Pamplona Es Un Regalo – because I thought it was such a perfect line. Especially as April has the fourth step on the ladder to fiesta and we were getting that much closer. The gift was slowly unwrapping…

Continue reading…

One of the great Sanfermineros passed away on Sunday 24th February, and although so much has already been written about this extraordinary and enigmatic man by his family and friends, and the news has gone around the world of course, I wanted to collect some of what I’ve seen and put it all together.

This piece isn’t just for those who knew and loved him, and his hundreds and hundreds of friends around the planet, but it’s also for those who read this site but didn’t know him, but might like to know a little about a man who didn’t just take Pamplona to his heart, but also had people from that great town take him to their hearts.

My thanks to everyone who has willingly and gladly, or unwittingly and unknowingly contributed to this montage of memories. I shall give credit where I can, but I hope most people who see their photos or words used will understand that they all, every one of them, have added something rather wonderful to this celebration of a unique man. Take it away, Bomber…

 

A RUNNER WRAPPED IN RAY BANS INSIDE AN ENIGMA

Bomber. February 6th 1948 – February 24th 2013. `When the legend becomes fact, print the legend´, Thanks to Rex Freriks for this version of a Jerry Roach photo, and for the great quote from the film `Who Shot Liberty Valance.´

I cannot claim to be one of those who knew Bomber well, to my great misfortune, but over the last few years I did get to know him a little, to my great privilege and pleasure. He lived an extraordinary life, travelling the world with the love of his life, Goldie.

Some of the people I shall be mentioning I know, and some I don’t. Here is just a very brief resume of his life, from someone I don’t know. It’s from one of his brothers, Roger, and was sent just after Bomber passed away.

Bomber and his beloved Goldie.

“Keith Baumchen was “The Bomber” or as he was known in Pamplona , “El Bomber”. He was dynamic, powerful and full of energy. He was born in the middle of Iowa on a large farm, the 2nd of four children. He grew up, however, in Southern California during the 50’s and 60’s. His childhood hero was Zorro. He was good in sports and played varsity basketball and baseball at Monte Vista High School . He was the fastest pitcher in the league. When Keith was young he was a very good artist, mostly oils with a brush or palette knife. He won awards and sold many of his paintings.

Bomber made Garmisch Germany his home base in the summer of 1976, a magical Bavarian town nestled in the Alps . He decided to become a world traveler and document his journeys with photographs. The following summer he met the beautiful Karen Anderson and nicknamed her “Goldie”. They became an incredible team with Goldie planning the trips and Bomber making it happen. They would do 5 to 10 month trips to every part of the globe during a span of 31 years. Each year they also went to Pamplona for the running of the bulls in July as well.

Goldie passed away summer of 2008 and Bomber has been on his own since. He was visiting friends in Coral Gables , Florida when he went down with cancer. It was Bomber’s wish to come back to his family in California . He died with hospice keeping him totally comfortable at the age of 65. Like a shooting star, “The Bomber” was a legend and an inspiration for anyone brave enough to take life to the limit.

My brother Bruce and sister Sue thank you for the kind words and unbelievable support. The response to the “El Bomber” facebook page has been incredible. It is impressive, to say the least, that over 500 people have commented on the message we sent out yesterday. We plan to keep it going and also would like to do a memorial in mid June, maybe Lake Tahoe …..what do you think?

Bomber’s brother, Roger

There is of course so much more to a man like Bomber’s life than just a few paragraphs…but this is not about his life, but a celebration of it. Roger mentions Garmisch, where Bomber made his home with Goldie…well, this was Garmisch one evening this week…

Garmisch, Germany, Monday March 4th, in celebration of Bomber.

Drew James Benson said of him, about how he left town for the last time towards the end of October:

“He slipped out of town quietly a day or two later, without a going away party or a fanfare. Like the true traveller he was, he slipped out of our lives the same way, quietly, quickly; off to the next adventure. I can’t believe he won’t return to Garmisch again this spring.”

Yoav Spicehandler said, perfectly and succinctly: “If a man be judged by the friends he had, then Keith “Bomber” Baumchen was a giant Sequoia. Tan bueno que era.”

Mozos juntos.

On Sunday March 3rd Pamplona celebrated the third step on the stairway to fiesta. There was a service and mass held in the Church of San Lorenzo , where the figure of San Fermin is kept. Towards the end, there was a touching eulogy written by Chapu Apaolaza, and read out by Teo Lazaro Armendaiz.

I’m including part of the video here because just listen to what happens when Teo finishes speaking, around the 4 minute 7 second mark. Then, wonderfully, at about 4m 50, they sing a jota to Bomber and all runners. Marvellous stuff.

No words needed.

When news of Bomber’s death reached Navarra, one of the headlines in the local Diario de Navarra newspaper was “Goodbye to elegance in the bull run.” Bomber was pretty much the coolest guy many of us have ever come across, but when he dressed in honour of those folks “back home” in America who’d put on their Sunday best for church when he was a lad, and he put on his Sunday jacket to run with the bulls, well, I bet even the bulls felt the chill.

Elegant from tip to toe, in full respect of not just the bulls but for the town and the fiesta itself, Bomber was a true Sanferminero, accepted by the people as one of them.

Band on the Run. Bomber, Joe Distler, Jim Hollander and Jesse Graham. Photo by Bernard Tyers.

There are so many stories, and so many photos, that it would be easy to go on, but, as George Harrison sang, all things must pass, so I’m coming towards the end now. If everyone could have just a little of what Bomber had, this beautiful planet we live on would be a better place.

I’m pretty sure that almost everyone who ever met him will not have forgotten him, no matter how briefly their paths crossed, and when they left him the world would have seemed a nicer place, there would have been a spring in their step, and their mood would have been better and if there wasn’t a smile on their face before they met him, I’ll bet there certainly was afterwards.

Bomber and Chloe, in a photo he sent her after San Fermin last year

Here’s what Chloe Drakari-Phillips said about this gentle soul: “Bomber encouraged me to take chances and whatever decisions I made to believe in them and never look back with regret. The advice he gave was second to none. He was kind, loving, artistic, modest, honest and had the biggest heart.”

Yup, I think everyone who knew him would agree with that. As I said above, I am so fortunate to have got to know him a little bit in Pamplona these last few years, and I will always take to heart his warm words of praise, and encouragement, about my attempts at writing these last couple of years. Said, of course, in his own inimitable way.
For my part, I’d just like to quote here something I put somewhere else about Bomber. It’s from “Last Night in Twisted River” by John Irving:

“We don’t always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly – as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth – the same way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be a part of our lives.”

Sweet Runnings, Bomber. I knew you because of a place that is heaven on earth…Pamplona…and though you may be gone from this earth, you’ll always be a part of so many lives. I have no doubt that while you may be Resting In Peace now, with your beloved Goldie, you’ll also, both of you, be Running In Paradise. It was, and always will be, my pleasure knowing you.

A unique, enigmatic and in the true sense of the word, a beautiful man.

Rick, Joe, Bomber and Jacobo

Jacobo Roura Formoso, on the right in the photo above, wrote: “Goodnight Bomber, never forget your freedom, Pamplona will always be yours. A hug, my brother.”

And Rick Musica, on the left above, amongst other things, wrote this last week:

“As sad as today has been, we must not be selfish and mourn OUR loss. Our loss was truly sad, no doubt about it. But, today, Bomber regained what was, truly, his most immeasurable loss, his Goldie. I am SO honored to have been a part of THEIR time here, and in the most magical place EVER!

As we gather this week (it was for the reunion in Florida) to celebrate our love of all things Fiesta, let’s take a minute to remember why we love it so much!

For all those who won’t be with us this week, you will NEVER be without us….

Tears, but mostly smiles, remembering the great times and people who make this what it is…

Viva San Fermin, Gora San Fermin, y Ya Falta Menos……”

As is the case so often…well said, Rick.

Cool runnings…Julen Madina Ayerbe, front right, Miguel Angel Eguíluz Lopez, front left, and Bomber and bull. One of The great shots.

 

When Jacobo wrote “Goodnight Bomber,” it is, all too sadly, true. But it’s only “goodnight,” that’s all. Bomber sleeps now, but his soul is with Goldie and they will be running together. And their spirits will be soaring like birds in flight, with only that sense of freedom and life that the bull run can give you.

For Bomber, finally, there are no limits, because for him, he’s made it. Ya falta nada…Viva! Gora!

For Bomber

A lovely video was put together by Jack Denault last week, which is just fantastic. The music and words to the song were just perfect, but he has allowed me to use not just his compilation, but to change the music too. Thanks Jack. You see, I wanted to, if you’ll excuse the pun, have some music with a bit of…San Fermeaning to it. Sorry…

He would probably be a little bit embarrassed by all of this, but for one more time, Bomber…take it to the limit!

Tim Pinks

A pre article note: As I was writing this month’s piece and putting it together to go to sanfermin.com’s pages, two things happened that have to be mentioned, and that I shall come back to very soon. The first thing was the incredibly sad, and extremely untimely, passing away of the great Bomber, one of the most wonderful foreigners to grace the streets of Pamplona for the last 45 years. His friends know of course, that goes without saying, but as he was a real, true, and bonafide “sanferminero” as the locals say, I thought those who didn’t know him should be able to read about a man that loved the town and all it stood for…and was loved right back by the town and many of it’s inhabitants. So there will be an extra article prontissimo, dedicated to Bomber, because if anyone deserves it, he does.

The other thing to crop up came totally out of the blue and was something I first read just a few days ago thanks to the people at Kukuxumusu who put this website together. I shall write more about it again, but at the end of this month’s literal bull-runnings, under the subtitle “The Bull” you can read the beginning of what I hope will be an ongoing narrative up to, and including, this year’s fiesta. Okay, I’m leaving this month’s writings as it was originally written, so let’s get the virtual corral gates open…

A MIXED PINTXO-PLATTER OF MUSINGS

Yup, for this month I’m offering up another mixed mish-mash of mutterings, indeed a veritable pintxo-platter of Pamplona ponderings. These articles never really get planned, you know, (as you may have noticed from that beginning), I just start writing something down at the top of the page and end up somewhere that’s as much a surprise to me as it may be to you. Usually the bottom of the page… But after last months Clock and Bull Story, which more or less had three courses, almost like a dinner with a starter, a main and a dessert, I thought I’d just dip in and out of various fiesta related things, rather as one might go on a Pamplona pintxo perambulation around the pubs of the old part, or a tapa and tipple trip amongst the taverns of the old town, and see if I couldn’t serve up a smorgasbord of San Fermin related scribbles. Okay, okay, enough of this edible orgy of alliteration. Apologies!

Once upon a time, way back then, when all photos were in black and white and the only colour ones were sepia coloured, (to me the photographic equivalent of those beautiful stained glass windows one finds in a church), a man got his photo taken. Nope, it’s not a very good quality photo, but in it’s ageing and weathered state it transports us back to a very different time in Pamplona ‘s fiesta history. My thanks, as so often, go this month to the Navarran newspapers for my piratical plagiarising plunderings.

Pamplona’s Favourite Uncle

Javier Echeverria, on the right.

In Diario de Noticias “Especial SF 11” supplement of Tuesday 5th July that year, they had a piece about one of those characters that would have no doubt passed us by if the journalist Fernando Huarte hadn’t written about him. He has long since passed away, as he died in 1911, but he played an important part in the fiestas of this town without equal, and he played that part for over 70 years. So yes, we’re going a long way back now…

His name was Javier Echeverria, known to all as Tio Javier, or in English, Uncle Xavier. We don’t have an equivalent English name, as it comes directly from the Basque of its origins, from the meaning of “new house.” But this man provided a direct link between the Comparsa of today, and that of yesteryear. The Comparsa, by the way, are that wonderful troupe of giants, big-headed people and those half-man half-horse creatures that twirl and dance, whack and thwack, and run and have fun around Pamplona during fiesta.

Tio Javier was a gypsy, and no one really knows where he was born, but it was inside Navarra somewhere. They do know just about when though…1811. I told you we were going back a long way. Some time in the 1830’s he appeared in the “old” Comparsa, before the original figures, which had become run down, were replaced in 1860 by the ones still dancing and bringing joy today, hence his being a link , even over a hundred years ago, to what was even then “yesteryear” – a different time and a different century.

Part of the troupe that is the Comparsa, showing the giants, with the African King and Queen in the second row.

He was a “chunchero” or a “chunchunero”, a pipe and drum player, and although the official town hall records only really note the relationships of the musicians to the Comparsa since 1848, there are enough earlier documents that name Javier Echeverria from the early 1830’s as already a municipal chunchero. He was always there, never missing a day, and so it appears that he and the Giants were inseparable.

He was an excellent player by all accounts, and there is even a surviving cutting from the now defunct newspaper The Echo of Navarra, and although there is no exact date on it, it is from July 1900 by a travelling chronicler who goes under the name Un Forastero, (A Stranger, An Outsider), while describing the giants and entourage in the street:

“And there also was that honourable gypsy from Orcoyen, Javier, the same fellow from the last forty years, with the same copper colouring, the same waistcoat, the same chulubit and I believe the same patch on the drum. But the best, the surprise, was when he invited the people to dance the jota along with him, scratching from his own repertoire along with the sound of another chunchunero. Horns of the Devil! What a to- do, what whirling of feet and moving of arms! You should have seen it boss, the figures dancing at his side looked like a picador flying around the arena. And he noticed it, too: they’re going for it! And within seconds everyone was dancing with the giants.”

Another photo of a favourite uncle, and his drum, now in the Municipal Archive of Pamplona The drum

Whether it was because he was a gypsy and felt a certain affinity with them, who knows, but he always played with the two giants that were the African King and Queen. He just seemed to adopt them.

But time waits for no man (although it waited a long time for him), and there came a point when he couldn’t play any more. In 1908, when he had being playing with the Comparsa for over 70 years, time finally, slowly, caught up with him, and due to an illness he had to retire. Bare in mind though he was in his late nineties by then! That year the town hall, under one Don Daniel Irujo, made a heartfelt tribute to Javier Echeverria, which he received having walked from his village of Linzoian, up in the hills near Burguete, about 25km away. Remember, again, he was in his late nineties, and remember also…it’s a mountainous, bendy route, (I hesitate even to say it was a “road” back then) which took him four days. And then he had to get back again…I tell you, there’s gotta be something in that pacharan…

I’m not sure what happened in 1909, but it seems he at the very least was in town for fiesta, but amazingly, in 1910, he was definitely back. He must have loved those Giants, because at the age of 99 he again walked from his village in north-east Navarra to Pamplona , and again it took him 4 days, proving that nothing would keep him from his cherished Comparsa.

The troupe that makes up the Comparsa, as drawn by Mikel Urmeneta.

But for the first time in his life, at nearly 100 years of age, he found that his hands couldn’t follow the signals from his head…and he couldn’t play. But, even though this was so, it didn’t stop him from being with his friends, both real and make believe. He still brought his pipe and drum with him, and one more time accompanied that magical troupe of figures, walking poignantly and silently alongside them, the zaldikos and kilikis, and the cabuzedos and los gigantes, including, of course, his beloved African King and Queen. It was to be the last time.

At the end of the fiesta the local press, in collaboration with the fair and the cinema people, amongst others, donated a part of their profits to him so that this gypsy, the town’s Uncle Javier, could have a better quality of what remained of his life.

When the fiestas of 1911 began he was in the Hospital Provincial. Where some people might die, as they say, “in full regalia”, well, Javier Echeverria died in full fiesta, on the 11th of July 1911. A local chronicler wrote, and please excuse my translation: “It has been the first year that Echeverria has not been able to be a part of our joy in fiesta, and it’s as if it couldn’t support the weight of his absence, as if the rockets and the music felt in the near distance the pain from his bed, and so fiesta transported his spirit, and Echeverria died at one with the fiesta.”

La Plaza del Castillo

The Plaza del Castillo, as it once was.

Progress happens. It has to. But when it comes to having to reform or renovate old, classic town centres, there is a way of doing it to try and minimise the damage, and to perhaps try and make sure that in an area of ageing beauty, any renovation blends in as much as possible to the existing style.

Only a bloody idiot would think that the “new” Castle Square in Pamplona is an improvement on what there was before. I am not going to get into the politics of the reasons for what was done, or the rights and wrongs of it…even I can understand that if work needed to be done to build a multi-level car park underneath, then something had to happen.

But to take what was a beautiful old square and do what they did to it is a disgrace. Yes, I know they needed to build some above ground constructions at the corners so they could house an entrance to the lifts and stairs to get below, (plus access to disabled toilets – a good thing), but why-oh-why did they have to make them look so glassy and modern, as opposed to building something in material that would match the buildings and feel of the square?

And why couldn’t they have put the railings that surrounded the plaza back, to at least give a bit of definition to the square, if not just to provide a convenient place for people to stop and ponder, to rest and lean against, or to sit on and dangle legs from? As I say, even a bloody idiot…after all, it’s not rocket engineering…ah well. I still live in hope that they’ll put railings back in the square to finish the job.

Officially sanctioned destruction and vandalism of the beautiful square, 2001. From Diario de Navarra, Nagore/Calleja Merche Galindo. Diario de Noticias.

Twelve years ago, on Monday July 24th, 2001, the vehicles and chainsaws snuck into the plaza at 05.10 a.m in the morning, and began to hack down the trees from three sides of the square. Only those trees on the Bar Txoko to Hotel La Perla side were spared. They came in at that ungodly hour, unannounced, to avoid the confrontations with the locals that they knew would surely happen. There was a riot that day, of course, and I was there with Dutch Shortie when it went off, and one day I’ll write about that too, but this isn’t the place to do it yet.

The next year the plaza was a building site, but by 2003, yup, 10 years ago, the square was finished and ready for fiesta. They had replaced the destroyed trees with new ones, the grass had been replaced and flowers planted…but something was lost. The “square” and the symmetry of it had gone, and I swear some of its spirit had gone too. Yes, buildings and places, if they are loved, have a soul to them, and it’s given to them by us.

It wasn’t the first time the square had been worked on, obviously, as over centuries things change and buildings are knocked down, or modernised…or just built on top of! The last major change to the square before 2001 was in 1931 proving, (at least to me) that even back then they were making a hash of so called “progress.”

The square in 1905.

I think this is a cracking photo. It’s taken from what appears to be above the Café Iruña, perhaps from one of the balconies, and so is a view facing south. At the top left is where the present day Bar Txoko is, then there is the gap where the street Espoz y Mina is, and then we cross to the building that to many of us foreigners will always be called Banco Central, whatever bank is currently occupying it. But look at the middle of the building, and the huge arched central façade, followed by the rest of the building. That glorious central part was the theatre, the Teatro Principal, and with that whole building intact the plaza was perfect, the classic square practically closed on all four sides by beautiful buildings with shaded arcades to walk under.

In the middle of the picture you can see the top of the old drinking fountain, surrounded by a circle of trees. That figure popping up above the tree level is a statue of Mari-Blanca, made by Juan de Perat in 1788 especially for the water fountain that was to be constructed in the square and installed in 1792, during the time that enabled the town authorities to provide various drinking water fountains to the population in that era.

And at the front of the shot is the old wooden bandstand, what they call the kiosk, which between 1900 and 1910 was placed right in front of Cafe Iruña. And that was then…

And this is now…the chupinazo in the plaza, July 6th, 2012.

Today, over a hundred years later, this is what we have. Yes, it’s still a lovely old square of course, and I still get that old thrill whenever I approach it, from whatever entrance, but I will always wish they’d bring the railings back, and I’ll always hope they’ll knock down the modern public entrances to the underground car park and construct something more I keeping with the architecture of the square.

But, back to the past for a little bit longer. In 1910 the wooden kiosk was moved from in front of Café Iruña to the middle of the square, and the old statue of Mari-Blanca was moved to the Plaza de San Fransisco until 1927, when it was moved to it’s present home in Taconera Park, (near the Hotel Tres Reyes) where it resides in peace amongst the gardens.

The central part of the building that contained the theatre was demolished, so opening up the Avenue Carlos 3rd right into the square. The façade was kept though and reconstructed brick by brick for the main entrance of the new theatre around the corner, now the Teatro Gayarre

The old wooden kiosk was replaced by the present stone one in 1943, and it has drinking fountains incorporated into it. Before they constructed the monstrosity of a stage they use now for the nightly concerts during fiesta, that small stone bandstand was where the bands played in the square from midnight to about 3 a.m, and everyone danced in front of it and around it, and in those days my (yes, my!) beautiful square really was the centre of fiesta.

A French painting from 1829, with the title “Combat de Taureaux a Pampelune (Espagne). Showing a bullfight in Pamplona ‘s Plaza del Castillo.

Indeed, if proof were ever needed that the square was always the centre of fiesta, well, that painting above doesn’t lie, as once upon a time, before Pamplona had a bullring, the bulls were run through the streets and into the plaza, where, in common with many other Spanish towns and cities, they were then fought in the central square. But that is most definitely a tale for another day!

The crowd I was with in the first couple of years slept in the square, partied in the square, ate in the square and danced in the square. Post bull run we met up back there. That amazing square really was the pumping, pulsating heart of our first extraordinary years. And, despite what they’ve done to you, my wonderful Plaza del Castillo, you still are.

“The Bulls” – Miura!

The mythical Miura bulls, Pamplona encierro legends, at home in Andalucia. ©Patxi Arrizabalaga. 2010. Torosysanfermines.blogspot.com

The name Miura is famous, and infamous, and central to the history of bullfighting, not just amongst bull runners of course, but in the taurine world as a whole. I have to be careful here, as there are many people out there whose knowledge about the bulls and their world goes way beyond anything I’ll ever know, but I wanted to finish this month’s piece with just a little bit about the bulls, and especially the Miuras and their connection with Navarra.

Although the Miuras (both the bulls and the family!) are from Andalusia , and live on the famous Zahariche ranch, they have a direct and fitting connection to Navarra. If you go to the official Miura website, one of the first things you’ll come across is on the very first page, under “Origins and History” where the direct literal associations between the word “miura” and its Basque and Navarran variants are obvious.

 

A mighty Miura, “Ermitaño” 12th July 2009. © José Antonio Pérez. 12 de julio de 2009.

Amongst the Euskera (Basque) words, and the variations thereof pertaining to the origins of the word “miura” and the bulls, you’ll find the words “mihura, miura, migura and mura”, along with documentation linking them to Urdax (1726), Pamplona, (1773) and Zugarramurdi (1635 and 1659). And my favourite bit is that it’s believed that the word “mihura” is from the Basque word for, in Spanish, “muerdago.” Which in English means “mistletoe” which for some reason I really rather like.

The Miura bulls come from various stock then, including as mentioned Navarra. Way back in 1879 the bullfighter Rafael “El Lagartijo” Molina Sanchez fought a Navarran bull called “Murcielago” in Cordoba . This bull survived 24 jabs and stabs from the picador and fought with such passion and spirit that this brave animal was saved, and so became what in the bullfight world is called an “indulto” – a pardoned bull.

Ermitaño again. If you were in any doubt…bull running can be bloody, dangerous and deadly. ©José Antonio Pérez

El Lagartijo, who was a friend of the Miura family, gave this animal as a present to his friend Antonio Miura, and the family sired him into the line of their own bulls, and the rest, as they say, is history. It’s said, according to last year’s “Sanfermines 204 horas de fiesta” magazine, that “thanks to this animal, some Miura bulls can still be seen to share certain characteristics with Navarrese bulls: bright red hides, short, upright horns, and red “birds eye” markings.”

And now, from the bulls, those beautiful and noble animals, to something I had absolutely no idea I’d be writing about until a couple of days ago.

 

“The Bull.”

Sergeant Gareth Thursby friends.

On September 15th last year, at a place called Checkpoint Tora in the Afghan province of Helmand , a young man died, a long, long way from home. This July, a little bit closer to home, but still in a foreign land in a place called Pamplona , in the Spanish province of Navarra , he will be remembered, and honoured, and commemorated by some of his colleagues.

He was Sergeant Gareth Thursby, of the 3rd Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment, and he died aged 29… just 6 days short of his 30th birthday. Another even younger man died that day in the same incident, Private Thomas Wroe. I say even younger, because he was still a teenager at 18. Just a lad, really.

But it is to the friends and colleagues of Sgt. Gareth Thursby that I return, because thanks to this website and the boys of Kukuxumusu and a news item they posted last week, I learnt all about this. What does this have to do with Pamplona , San Fermin and the running of the bulls?

Well, as the link explained, his friends and colleagues have decided to honour him by running with the bulls, purely, it seems, because of the fact that his nickname was “The Bull.”

sanfermin.com 27/02/2013. 9 English soldiers will come to the Sanfermin Running of the Bulls to gather funds for the families of fallen comrades

sanfermin.com 27/02/2013. 9 English soldiers will come to the Sanfermin Running of the Bulls to gather funds for the families of fallen comrades

On the 15th of September, 2012 a sergeant by the name of Gareth Thursby died in action in Afghanistan. To some of his friends and comrades he was fondly known as the “The Bull” and now these same friends want to come to take part in The Running of the Bulls during the Sanfermin fiestas of 2013 in order to pay homage to their dead comrade and to gather funds for families of other dead comrades

This year we will see some special participants in the Sanfermin Running of the Bulls. Nine soldiers from the British army who belong to the Third Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment will take part in the running of the bulls in memory of their fallen comrade, Gareth Thursby, who was killed in Afghanistan. Sergeant Thursby lost his life on the 15th of September, 2012 and he leaves a wife and two children. Thanks to the social networks, we have learnt from one of his colleagues, CorporalMathew Pritchard, about the initiative which he and some other soldiers have taken to start a campaign to collect funds in memory of the fallen soldier for the ABF The Soldiers Charity. This organization exists to help the families of soldiers who have died in action. They aim to collect a total of 23.000 euros and they have already reached the figure of 6000 euros through the web page: justgiving.com/3YorksBullRun

Sergeant Gareth Thursby was fondly known to his comrades as “The Bull” and it was thanks to this nickname that the idea arose to take part in the running of the bulls in Pamplona and to collect funds for the families of fallen soldiers at the same time. For the moment, some nine soldiers have agreed to come and they are already in training for the event. They hope to come to Pamplona on the 5th of July and to take part in the first Sanfermin running of the bulls on the 7th of July at 8.00 a.m. They have formed a group in Facebook (3yorksbullrun) and an account in twitter (@3yorksbullrun) where they are continually updating their plans for this commendable project.

At his funeral they provided a wreath in the shape of a bulls head, and when they run this July they shall be wearing t-shirts with their friend’s face on it. And also, and best of all from my point of view, they are also doing this to raise money for the Army Benevolent Fund, and are hoping to raise 23,000 euros.

I said at the beginning of this article that when I write these things I never know quite where they are going to end up, and never is this truer than in this case. I shall try and keep you informed and updated on their progress as we get closer and closer to fiesta, but until then I shall leave you with these quotes about him.

The Bull Run Team out on patrol. A long way from home…

The Bull Run Team out on patrol. A long way from home…

The first is from his wife. He was married to Louise, and had two children, Joshua and Ruby: “Gareth was the love of my life. He was an amazing husband and father, full of life and kind hearted, with a passion for his work and his family. He was brave, hardworking, a loving husband who was a devoted father to his children. Our hero.”

And amongst what his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Zachary Stenning, MBE, said, was this: “We have lost one of our finest, Sergeant Gareth Thursby. His nickname “Bull” epitomised everything: he was strong, confident and incredibly robust. He was admired and deeply respected by his soldiers and peers for his soldiering skills, physical strength and forthright honesty. Utterly professional, his standards were legendary.”

And it is to the legendary and world famous town of Pamplona that his friends will come to honour him. Pamplona, this town that so many of us love so much, will no doubt do him, and them, proud.

Ya falta menos…

As I finish this updated piece it is March the 3rd, one of the Escalera Days, and in the month since the last one on February the 2nd, a month during which as mentioned above Pamplona has lost one of it’s amazing foreign friends, the irreplaceable Bomber, (again, more of whom very soon), we have heard about someone else who never even knew the place, but who will be here in spirit this July, thanks to his friends. With that, for the moment, I think there is nothing more to say.

There will be no video this month, it doesn’t seem appropriate, but, as always, and more poignantly than ever…ya falta menos…

Some books to snuggle up with during Winterlude

View from the bandstand in the Plaza del Castillo

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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!

 

One of the beautiful things about writing about Pamplona and everything involved with it is that there is just so much to choose from. Any town that was established well over a thousand years ago will have an almost inexhaustible amount of history to choose from. When that town is already strategically placed as to be fairly be important, and hence become famous as being part of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, well, it’s place in the history books is assured.

Think about it…tourism didn’t exist a thousand years ago, of course, but if you were to go a-wandering for any reason, there is a good chance it would be to make a religious pilgrimage, and whether be it to Jerusalem, or Lourdes…or Santiago de Compostela, and if you were going to Santiago and coming from the north then you’d almost certainly pass through Pamplona.

Throw in a famous saint, the local population, a crazy bull run, nine days of organised anarchy, and some of the most famous people from the last hundred years, along with alcohol, music and bucket loads of ice, and you have the ingredients for the ultimate hedonistic cocktail.

Yes of course, this extraordinary city is famous for many things, but especially for its fiesta. I often think that if aliens landed to invade us, say, somewhere in the outback of Australia, they’d think, yup, this should be easy, or if they landed in central London or New York, they might think, jeez, these people need our help…but if they landed during fiesta in Pamplona, I think they’d be on the first spaceship back home. Unless they were party animal aliens, of course, in which case they’d stay for the whole thing, leave with their two heads tucked between their luminous tails, but return every year.

As we’re in that bit of no-mans land between the post fiesta highs and come down, but not yet being able to look forward to Christmas and New Year, and of course the first of the countdown-to-fiesta “escalera’s,” I thought I just go off on my own sort of meandering, Pamplona style.

El Maestro: Manuel Turrillas Ezcurra

Fifteen years ago on October 20^th 1997 one of the great Navarrans died. His name was Manuel Turrillas Ezcurra, and he was born in the village of Barrasoain , just under 25 km south of Pamplona. And beautifully, for those who know not just what the “Escalera” is, but the song too, he was born in 1905…on January 1st. Just perfect.

He is now known just as El Maestro Turrillas, because he really gave the modern fiesta as we know it now it’s beating, thumping, pumping heart. I mentioned him briefly in last month’s piece about the heavenly peña “La Veleta” but I thought it was about time I mentioned him more fully.

If you’ve ever woken up, say, on the grass in the Plaza de Castillo in the old town, and felt the earth moving, (steady!), or woken up in a flat and felt the walls pounding, you might quite possibly have been feeling the effects of your heart going into overdrive trying to keep you alive…or it could be that one of the peña bands was going past and playing one of El Maestro’s songs. Or both of the above, quite possibly…

 

This amazing man was a true Pamplonican too, as he moved there when he was 20, and pretty instantly joined the town hall band, La Pamplonesa, where he stayed for 50 years. He wrote about 400 songs of all kinds, and some of those you will have heard and no doubt danced to during fiesta. Many of the peñas asked him to write their club hymn, and he also wrote the local football club’s song too.

And yes, he is honoured with a statue to him in his home town of Barrasoain, and they also put up a bust of him in a plaza named after him in a suburb of Pamplona, Berriozar, which was inaugurated in August 1998, but unfortunately it was stolen just a year ago and still hasn’t been found. Some people just have no learning or respect, actually, just no idea, and I hope at least once every day a pigeon in Pamplona poops on the perpetrators.

Now, just as I love the fact that he was born on January the 1st, there is something else that is rather touching. Maestro Turillas didn’t just live in Pamplona, but he lived in the Casco Viejo, the old town. And where would this man of Pamplona , of fiesta, who through his music will always live on, and has hence become an indelible part of San Fermin, live do you think? Well, there is a plaque marking where he used to live, in a street called La Cuesta de Santo Domingo. For those of you who don’t know, that is where the bull run begins.

And oh-so-perfectly, as so many of us know, before the encierro begins, a short refrain is sung three times to a replica of San Fermin that is put in the little niche in the old walls near the beginning of the run. Way back during my first fiestas I joined in singing that song, and my skin is tingling now as if it were just yesterday. The words go like this: “A San Fermin pedimos, por ser nuestro patron, nos guie en el encierro, dandanos su bendicion.” They have been singing this song before the run ever since 1962,and they also form part of the words to the club hymn of La Unica, formed in 1903 and the oldest of all Pamplona ’s peñas.

What do the words mean? Just this: “To San Fermin we ask it,as he’s our patron saint, guide us in the bull run and give us your benediction.” And why do I think it is “oh-so-perfect” that this particular song is sung on Santo Domingo Hill, where the maestro Turillas lived? Because he wrote the music to it. Sometimes, you just can’t improve the script or better the truth. I bet there is one happy man up in that great fiesta in the sky when he hears his song sung every July. What a musician, what a maestro, and by all accounts, what a lovely man.

The refrain sung to the saint before the run.

La Casa de la Misericordia

The word “misericordia” means forgiveness, pity…or mercy. The House of Mercy is an institution that has been going in Pamplona since 1706. It started out as a place that looked after the most “unfortunate” and “unfavoured” of the city’s inhabitants. Originally this included the young as well as the old, but it wasn’t until 1980 when they began to only look after old people who needed help.

But in 1920, when the town authorities decided to demolish the old bullring and construct a new one nearby, the rising costs effectively meant the town hall couldn’t afford to finance it, and eventually in stepped the Casa de Misericordia, who thanks to finance from various people and places in Pamplona to build the new Plaza de Toros became the de facto owners. Construction began in March 1921, and was speeded up when the old ring burnt down in August of that year, as they had to have a ring ready for the following year’s fiesta. And ready it was for its inauguration the following July 7^th, 1922.

Ever since then this charity organises everything in relation to the bulls: the contracting of the ranches and the bullfighters, the setting up of the corrals where the bulls stay when they arrive in Pamplona,the arrival of the bulls into those same corrals, the setting up and construction of the wooden barriers that keep, hopefully, the bulls away from the watching crowds during the run, the shepherds (pastors) that run with the bulls and have saved so many runners from injury or worse, (as Alexander Fiske-Harrison pointed out to me, “shepherds” look after sheep…but I don’t know what other word to use – herdsman? Got it! ) and everything else you see or don’t see in the ring – the ticket collectors, bullring staff, the band, and even the butchery…the Casa de Misericordia looks after the lot.

James Michener and“The Drifters”

 

I thought it was about time I wrote my own little homage to a man I never met but who changed my life for ever, and for the better. And that is one of the most understated things I have ever written. This man didn’t just change my world, he introduced me to a whole new one. Pamplona , of course, and the Fiesta of San Fermin.

In 1980 I bought a book about a bunch of travellers at the tail end of the sixties, 3 guys and 3 girls from various countries, who meet up in Spain and decide to travel together. The first place they decide to go to as a group is Pamplona, during fiesta time. The Pamplona chapter is 100 pages long and quite frankly I just didn’t believe it. I knew the book was fiction, but this was just fairy tale stuff…surely, in this modern day and age a festival as medieval and crazy as what was described in the book just couldn’t exist? I knew one day I would go and find out.

Well, four years later with a friend I rode my Norton motorbike down through France, crashed the thing near the border, but made it to Pamplona by train. I still feel glad that I crashed…maybe I wouldn’t have arrived in Pamplona when I did, or chosen the corner of the Plaza del Castillo that I did…and hence met the people I did. But I tell you what, when I walked into the square on that July 6^th afternoon, I knew I had found what I hadn’t even been looking for, a paradise on earth that still brings the goose bumps up whenever I think about it or whenever I am there.

Michener wrote many books, mostly fiction, but also a superb factual book called Iberia, packed with history and stories and photographs, and is well worth a read, especially if you love Spain. There is also his autobiography, “The World Is My Home.” But for The Drifters, I have to thank you James Michener, as my life has been immeasurably blessed by that one book.

I could go on… thanks Hemingway, for influencing Michener, thanks Gertrude Stein for telling Hemingway…but really the thanks are due to Pamplona and it’s people, for turning a religious event into something that really is out-of-this-world…as I said near the beginning,what on earth would one of those other-worldly aliens make of this town and its inhabitants? I know what I made of it, and it changed my life for the infinitesimal better. Thank you Pamplona and Pamplonicans, I love you to bits, and as I wrote somewhere else recently…I blame the patxaran.

Monty Python

Oh, and Monty Python? Well, sort of, but not quite….but another “M.P.” for sure. And no, not my brother, Michael Pinks, but Michael Palin.

For those who don’t know, Michael Palin was part of Monty Python, but he was also a huge Ernest Hemingway fan. Ever since he was a boy growing up in the northern English city of Sheffield , he read Hemingway’s books and fell for this world outside his own that the great man wrote about. As he wrote in his book that accompanied a BBC travel series, “Hemingway Adventure,” after reading some of the man’s stuff, he felt like, he wrote, “I’d grown up a little. Lost my literary virginity. Books would never be quite the same again.”

He decided he would go out and experience Hemingway’s world, and that; “I must be bold and fearless and go out there and do it for myself.” He goes on to say; “Unfortunately in the 1950’s there wasn’t much call for provincial English schoolboys to carry mortars up Spanish hillsides, and though I had a goldfish I hadn’t fought for seven hours to land it.”

Decades later, and well after the Monty Python series and films were over, he has become a bit of a traveller, in fact a hugely entertaining, knowledgeable and funny one, who does wonderful and witty travel programmes for the BBC, and for the centenary of Hemingway’s birth in 1999, the Beeb, as we call them, sent him around the world following the writers path. And so it came to pass, of course, that he ended up in Pamplona during fiesta.

He stayed in the La Perla hotel in the square for the three days he was there, before having to move on and film more for the series, but he certainly caught the mood of fiesta. After all for those who know, those first three days are madness personified. Magic, marvellous and manic madness for sure and if you can only go for a few days, make it the beginning!

He didn’t do the run itself, but watched it from a balcony window in the hotel, but he did of course talked to people about it, including John Macho and James Ballor, always known as Curly. In the book, when he asks Curly about the run and why he did it and what he felt from it, one of the reasons Curly gives him is; “It’s an aphrodisiac, Michael. Believe me.” His reply? “Believe him or not, I can’t help thinking taking Viagra would be easier.”

“Michael Palin’s Hemingway Adventure” was a great series, and the book is a colourful and interesting travelogue through Hemingway’s life, written in Palin’s own simple, straightforward and inimitable style. It’s funny too. (He also wrote a funny novel called “Hemingway’s Chair”, for those of you interested.) But I’ll leave with this quote from the book of the series, before he watched his first run.

“There is not much rest to be had in Pamplona tonight. Those who have run with the bulls before will try to sleep as best they can. Those who haven’t will, likely as not, have been awake most of the night saucing themselves up. Those of us who are here to film have to be getting into positions on the course by six o’clock. And the noise goes on. It’s like the night before battle.” Two things I love in that paragraph…”saucing themselves up!” and “the noise goes on. It’s like the night before battle”. He got it!

The Osasuna song

So, back to El Maestro Turillas for this months ending video, and let’s go from bulls…to balls. I mentioned he wrote the club song for the local football team, Osasuna, so here it is. There are many versions out there on the net of course, and of much better quality, but these guys in the band are my friends, and I love them to bits too. They are a Pamplona band, and used to be called Impekables, but are now Los Zopilotes Txirriaos. The song is “We’ll always be Reds.” But for some reason that night the words were changed to “We’ll always be guiris” (foreigners). Can’t imagine for the life of me why…the song starts after about 40 seconds. Remember, the music is The Maestro’s…

 

It hardly seems real that it was only 2 months ago and fiesta hadn’t even started yet, and we all had the whole thing ahead of us to look forward to…and it hardly seems fair that it’s all over now, and we all have ahead of us 10 months of waiting.

But there is usually a little luz at the end of the callejon, and one can always look back and remember with a smile some of the events of those mad times in a crazy town called Pamplona . To paraphrase a saying, “If Pamplona didn’t exist, they’d have to invent it.” But it does exist, and they didn’t have to invent anything, but just let a town and its inhabitants develop a religious festival into something extraordinary.

And if someone tried to create anything similar now, why, we all know that “health and safety”, (yup, it does exist in Spain , but I think it goes under the name of “animals and alcohol”), would be down on the organisers like a ton of bull. Shit.

But going back to 2 months ago, every one of us who has been before knew that we were returning to the high life again. Not just the highs of the encierro, but of everything else that happens during the 204 hours of the Fiesta of San Fermin. Because everything just seems magnified there…the highs are higher, the laughs are greater, the girls are prettier, the hangovers more spectacular, I get uglier…even the lows are better! And if you’d never been before but are now hooked and can’t wait for next July to come around…believe me, the next 10 months will be the longest months of waiting you’ll ever have.

So now that the Kids of Kuku have un-strapped me from my strait jacket and asked me to write for them again, I’m going to have a little meander down the high road that is memory lane, fiesta-style.

To start with, a bit of fun. Doing the rounds the last few months on a couple of fiesta websites there has been a bit of chatter about the fella above. I first came across him in 1986 as my friends and I were sitting in the gutter in the plaza, and we pretty much instantly called him the King of the Gypsies. I’ve since found out that other groups had other names for him, such as the Garlic King or the Onion Man, (and right now, just as we go to “press”, I’ve seen a couple of pictures drawn of him in 1988, with the title “El Conde de la Basura” – the Count of Rubbish, or perhaps, the Earl of the Rubbish Bin!), but whatever nickname he was given, his party trick was as smooth as it was simple: he’d just show up wearing whatever he happened to find lying around at any given moment, and sit down beside a group of foreigners.

Sometimes he would add to his attire at the same time as someone else was discarding theirs, so bit by bit he would be wearing more and more. One day during one of our rare forays over to the terrace at Bar Txoko, (well, although we were skint it was post encierro time and a cognac and vanilla or three were certainly deserved), he sat down at our table, leant over to me and whispered in my ear, “excuse me please, a patxaran for me.” To my great delight, he spoke a bit of English!

I found out his name was Francisco, and you’d see him throughout the day and into the night, dressed up looking like he’d just arrived from another planet sometimes, sitting with whatever group were buying him drinks at the time, getting gently sozzled. We used to joke that he was probably a bank manager, who for two weeks a year did exactly what he wanted. Or maybe he was San Fermin in disguise, just coming around to see everyone. I don’t remember seeing him in the 1990’s though…does anyone know anything?

 

As mentioned a couple of months ago, the present bullring was 70 years old this year. Feliz cumpleaños, plaza de toros. Anyone who read the piece for May, “Stair Ways Day”, may remember the two photos of runs from 90 odd years ago, one where the run veered right as you exited Estafeta, heading toward the old ring, and the other veering left and into what became Telefonos and the run downhill and through the tunnel into the new ring.

In the picture above you can see the old ring at the top of the picture with the new one just below it, and to get your bearings as I know it’s not too clear, the Plaza de Castillo is to the right of the old ring, with a water fountain surrounded by trees in the centre, and so to the bottom of the square that long street is of course the Estafeta.

Well, the year the present ring opened also saw the first recorded human mountain in the new plaza, and it happened right at the entrance where the tunnel meets the sand. It also happened, of all days, on the day of its inauguration, July 7th. And amazingly there is a photograph of it, and though it is by no means the clearest photo ever taken, you can still see pretty well what’s going on.

They were, literally, different times in those days, as at 6 a.m the rocket sounded and the bulls from the Herederos de Vicente Martinez ranch hit the streets and the first of that years encierros was underway. All went well it seems and some of the earlier runners had entered the ring without any trouble, but it only takes one to fall to bring down the rest…and that is what happened, until in no time there was a mountain of people blocking the tunnel and the herd were quickly upon them, but with no way through.

But they got through, alright, (with the encouragement of the herders!), but not before they had left over a hundred, yes a hundred, runners injured, to a greater or lesser degree. Amazingly, no one died that day, but it was a heck of a way to christen the new bull ring, and one that wasn’t forgotten for a long time.

High Life meets Night Life

 

In the mornings, after the bull run, we’d be waiting for the little bulls to come out and play, and there would sometimes be a balloon or two floating above the ring. Not a child’s balloon, but a hot air balloon, and I’d wonder what it must be like, floating around up there serenely, while down here on the sand all was madness. I’ve never been on a balloon ride before, but it must be a great way to travel and see things, especially from such a different perspective. Like being in a plane, but closer, and quieter. It would be great to float around the city during fiesta in the daytime and see all those familiar places from a few hundred feet up, but what I’d really like to do is the same trip, but at night.

 

My Dad told me how as a child in London (and we’re going back to the mid-twenties and early thirties here), he used to dream that he could fly…yup, just jump out of the window, arms out-stretched…and fly over London at night. That’s how I’d like to do it over Pamplona , arms apart, and just glide and swoosh and smile my way over the city as it partied beneath me. Now that would be the high life!

Now if some of those magnificent street sellers have some jet packs for sale next year, I might just by a couple, (if batteries are included). Even if it does say that they’re made in Senegal …

The Heavenly Peña

For anyone who has read some of these articles before (and thanks so much to those of you during San Fermin who took the time to say how much you liked what I’ve been writing – it was really appreciated), I love delving back into the past, (after all, with no past we wouldn’t have our present), as I often find a particular poignancy about certain old stories, especially if they are accompanied by an old black and white picture or two, or those evocative sepia stained ones…don’t you feel sometimes you’d like to be able to just step into them, and say, “hello…”

Well, if you’re wondering what this has to do with the high life, I don’t think you can get much higher than a heavenly peña…

In 1998 the Club Taurino de Pamplona, in a magazine issued to celebrate their 50th anniversary, had an article about a long since disappeared peña, La Veleta, “The Weathervane.” There are a couple of other meanings for that word, but I’m pretty sure that “weathervane” is a correct translation. Now, this lot were quite something, as they have a couple of “firsts” to their name, a couple of “somethings” that all peñas would eventually have that would change the whole “look” of fiesta forever.

One day I’d like to find out more about some of what I call the “pre-peñas”, too, those that existed before the arrival of those that we have now and know and love, but this lot were certainly amongst the first of the “modern type” peñas. As the article said, “they were the prototype of the modern peña, with their band and their fine style, and they were the admiration of everyone.”

For a club that only had a very short lifespan, their influence was huge in one regard thanks to one original member, and it’s down to him that fiesta in Pamplona, and many other places, has one particular flavour, that “look.”
I didn’t know too much more about them except that after the Civil War they ceased to be – see what I mean about some things being poignant? – but then as luck would have it, in the July 1st Diario de Navarra fiesta supplement this year, there was an article on them.

But it’s back to the past again for the moment. The club was formed in 1929 by a group of friends, and in those days the peñas dressed up in normal, dark clothes, all be it perhaps with a blue or black “blusa”, the jacket. Then in 1931 Juan Marquina Gonzalez (above), one of the originals of La Veleta decided the peña should adopt a uniform of red and white, arguing that when the clothes got dirty, all you had to do was dump them in bleach and they would be clean again. Well, his argument won the day and a legend was born. They were the first peña to do this.

So they’d hit the streets dressed uniformly in a style that is now denominated “Pamplonica” and is famous all over the planet: the white trousers and shirt with the red sash and pañuelo, something that up until then only the gaitero and txistulari piper groups would wear.

Another is that their club song, or as they would call it, the peña hymn, was the first to be written by Manuel Turillas, more commonly known now as Maestro Murillas. Whenever you hear one of those peña anthems it was probably written by that amazing man. Not a bad record for a club that only survived for seven years…the red and whites, the band, the hymn…

How many of us get a tingle when we pack our whites into our bags before San Fermin, carefully rolling the sash up and folding the pañuelo…it’s not really until your fiesta clothes are safely packed that you think, “Yes!, it’s coming…”

And as for the feeling of excitement when first putting them on again on the morning of July 6th…well, a thousand thank you’s, Fantasmas de La Veleta.

The year after, in 1932, two other peñas copied them, dressing in whites, all be it with a different coloured pañuelo and sash. Pamplona ‘s oldest surviving peña, La Unica (1903), used green as their colour, while La Jarana used blue. (Although La Jarana were founded in 1940, there are documents attesting that there was a banner in 1931 saying “La Jarana salutes Turon”). Out of interest, a “suit” of whites in the 1930’s cost 16 pesetas, and a pair of those canvas alpargatas (espadrilles) cost 2 pesetas.

As I mentioned, the last year La Veleta danced in the streets of their home town was 1936. Then came the dark shadows of civil war, and some of them died at the front, some were shot later…and some made it home, but by the time the clouds had moved away, it was too late and the peña fell apart. But, as the Club Taurino magazine said, “they left an indelible memory in the hearts of many Pamploneses.” And I hope they’re all up there together once more, somewhere in that great fiesta beyond the clouds, living the high life again and singing the Veleta hymn, the first to be written for a peña by the great Turrillas. Viva La Veleta!

Finally, some people find they need to leave the city during fiesta, just for some rest, or some sanity, while others begin their fiesta with some pre-party preparations or end it with some post-party rest and recuperation. And I suppose if you want find the high life, what better way than to take the high road. I’ll leave this month’s article with something from A.E Hotchner’s book, “Papa Hemingway.” Take yourselves back to Navarra in the fifties…

“Just to the northeast of Pamplona are the Irati river and its forests, which were such an integral part of The Sun Also Rises. Ernest was afraid that they had been completely ruined, but his fears proved unfounded. For four afternoons we picnicked at various places along the river, going higher and higher up the mountain, leaving at noon, getting back just in time for the bullfight. We travelled in three cars, each car responsible for part of the picnic.

The wine was kept cold in the clear Irati water, and each day we swam up the river, which flowed through a gorge between the high-rising walls of the beech-covered mountain. It was miraculous to leave the wild tumult of the feria and a half hour later to be in the midst of this primitive, quiet beauty.

One day after lunch Ernest and I sat on the pebbly bank, contemplating the view, which consisted of circling hawks, rising mountains, and the seven women of our cuadrilla who were napping at various levels on warm rock ledges above the opposite bank. “Nymphs on shelves in nature’s store,” Ernest said. “What a hell of a happy time.” He watched a hawk plummet earthward and disappear, then re-emerge beating sky-ward with a small prey struggling between his talons. “You know, Hotch,” he said, his eyes on the hawk, “it’s better than The Sun Also Rises.”

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And so, finally, it’s video time. This one has been doing the rounds lately so many of you may have seen it, this version is actually two videos cobbled together, but for those who haven’t, just watch how stupid some people can be. I don’t mean by participating in bull runs and such like, but the way in which some of them behave while in the street, or where they stand. It’s from the Azores . Check the woman out at 2m 50 secs…not the worst by any means…but just how dumb can you get?! Be warned, it’s brutal in parts. Hasta la proxima!

Hemos vivido esta mañana el primero de los actos de Sanfermin 2013 en el Hotel Puerta del Camino de Pamplona. El escritor británico Tim Pinks ha presentado en sociedad a su primera criatura literaria titulada “Bullseye”. Este libro-cuento relata en inglés y castellano el recorrido entre la dehesa y la Plaza de toros de Pamplona desde el punto de vista de un toro de Miura… de ahí el título, Bullseye (El ojo del toro).

Y es que un toro de Miura le habló a Pinks en sueños tras una brutal resaca en Sanfermin de 1997. Pinks, corredor de encierros durante más de 20 años, estaba viviendo oníricamente una carrera perfecta junto a los toros y, al llegar al callejón, un burel le pidió clemencia y le instó a que le ayudara a escapar. Pinks recuerda cómo le dijo al toro que no podía luchar contra su destino. Desde entonces ideas y anotaciones han ido tomando cuerpo hasta que hace dos años se convirtieron en un proyecto real de autoedición que ahora ve la luz y con el que Pinks cumple su compromiso con aquel animal.

El libro se vende a diez euros en La Casa del Libro y en la librería Abárzuza de Pamplona. Próximamente se incrementarán los puntos de venta.

As the last step of the Escalera is taken this June 6th before we’re submerged in the tsunami that is San Fermin, and that tidal wave of craziness and happiness and hangovers that is Pamplona in fiesta sweeps over us, this months bag of bull droppings has as it’s main part the chat I had with Julen Madina, and whether you know who he is or not, I hope you find it interesting. I certainly did. And of course there is other stuff too, starting with…this.

PRIMEVAL

That smell of bull…not the way they smell when you’re near them when you’re watching them in the corrals, or if you’re lucky or good enough to smell them as you run near them, or when they sweep by you in that fluid and majestical way they have sometimes, but I mean the smell they have when you are with them, right by their side or just in front of them as their horns rise and dip in that hypnotic fashion.

That smell…the one that envelopes you when you’re in the middle of the herd and your heart is pumping and you’re so close that they are touching you, and despite the noise of the hooves and the bells on the steers and the screams of the crowd…everything has gone quiet and time, in that strange way it has when something magical is happening to you in the run…time seems to be, if not actually stopped, then operating in it’s own little vacuum, speeding up and slowing down as your own particular run in your own personal world unfolds…

That smell you feel cloaking around you as you become a part of them and their own rhythm and you realise you are running like they are…you’ve joined the herd…but the tunnel into the ring is looming and you know that not only is there is no escape, but it dawns on you that there is no room for you and the bulls…and you know that it is you who is about to go flying as you hit the edge of the tunnel wall and you go down and under the hooves and yes, again, the bulls seem to make time hic-up in that magical, mystical way they have and you have become a part of them as you are rolled and then turned over right under them, every which way like one of those crazy fun fair rides, until you come out from underneath them and somehow you’re on your feet again and running out of the tunnel and into the sunlight and you hear the roar of the crowd and time has gone back to normal once more…but that smell, that primeval smell, is still with you and will be for hours…

That smell…how do you describe it? These animals were painted on the walls of the Caves of Altamira, not a hundred and fifty miles from Pamplona, so there is not just something ancient about them, or wild and savage…but primitive. Yes, primeval. Those bulls take us back to a time when we were hunters, living in caves…and these beasts were such a powerful part of people’s lives in those days that men were driven not just to put their images down in the place where they lived, but I’m sure to honour them too.

Well, one man who knows more than most about running with those extraordinary creatures (and the strange earthly odours that emanate from them) is Julen Madina, as he has probably run longer with the bulls, been closer to them and certainly run as well if not better than anyone out there, whether they are still running, slowing down, or actually…stopped, and I mean “stopped” as in retired, than perhaps anyone involved in bull running. A couple of months ago I said I’d write about a chat I had with Señor Madina on the phone, and now, with just a month to go before fiesta, I think it’s time to post it. At the time I joked about how great I was at multi-tasking, managing to talk to him in Spanish on the phone, while simultaneously translating it into English and writing it down on paper, and drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette.

Um…so good was I at this multitasking lark that when I re-read what I’d written, well, I couldn’t. My shorthand was so short it was unintelligible, my long hand was a scrawl that Guy Fawkes would have been proud of after they put him on the rack and stretched him, and the rest was a jumble of letters that a dyslexic could have understood…but I couldn’t. But Mr. Madina kindly agreed to write down his answers to my questions if I sent them, which I did, and so he did, and here we are.

I hope I’ve caught the flavour and passion of his answers and managed to capture some of his love and enthusiasm for all things related to bull running, not just in Pamplona but elsewhere too. Oh, and that ancient, earthly smell of the bulls? Well, I’ve often heard people talk about it and I’ve smelt it myself, but how do you actually describe it? I’ll try to at the end of this, but first, over to Julen Madina.

The Bull Runner’s Runner – A chat with Julen Madina

There was no particular order to the questions I asked him, so this is how it went from the first question to the last. There was, however, one question I had to ask, and it’s become what I call a “Bay of Biscay” question…that is, I was glad that the Bay of Biscay lay between us when I asked it. Not to mention the English Channel, a whole load of hills and mountains and a thousand miles, too…Anyway, that question comes up fairly soonish, so until then… The first thing I asked came up after something Rex Freriks had said a couple of months ago, about how he’d be in his position on Estafeta and as the bells chimed and the rocket went, he’d look across the way a bit and see Larry Mazlack, and they’d both give each other the thumbs up, and that got me wondering if Madina had a particular pre-run ritual. Many do, of course…my pre-run ritual was staying out all night and then heading to the run at about 7.30, if I’d managed to stay awake, for the world’s quickest sobering up medicine…the fear and adrenaline of waiting for the encierro. But here’s how Madina did it:

“Si, si, I always did the same. I got up at six thirty and I’d feel quite stiff, so I’d stretch and warm up a little, and have a light protein drink and pray to my saints. I’d pray to San Fermin, who I had on the table, and pop into the bathroom. Very important that! Around about 7.15 I’d leave for Pamplona and get there about 7.35 or 7.40, and get into my warm up zone. I’d warm up really well, so I’d be ready to run and be not just mentally prepared but physically too, and at about 5 to 8 I’d go downstairs and out into the Estafeta and get to my place, and…”

I’m tingling already. It’s a long time since I ran, 13 years now, but I have never forgotten that pre-run feeling, and the electrically charged buzz that seemed to come through the very cobbles (in those days) of the street and gently course upwards through my feet and legs until my whole body was warmed up despite the chill of the morning…oh god, how I miss it.

As some of you may know, Madina retired in 2010, but I wanted to ask him if there wasn’t a small part of him that was happy that he didn’t have to run any more…

“No, the complete opposite. Something inside of me has gone out, resulting in it being very difficult for me to be in Pamplona but not run in the Encierro. There is always a part of me that will want to run. Let’s see if this year I can find one way or another to be bound, or involved in the run so I’m able to be in Pamplona”.

I’m pretty sure by this he means hoping to be involved somehow in commentating on the run for the radio or television, and I wish him the best of luck in that.

In 2004 Madina suffered a terrible goring in the tunnel into the bullring, the video of which you can see in April’s posting, “Retarded Runners”, (and I’m still not sure about that title), but I wanted to ask him about afterwards…did he recover perfectly from his injuries to be able to run as before?

“Well, I can say yes, I recovered fine. It took a lot out of me to recuperate, because it’s one thing to recover from the wounds, to improve your mobility, all this is good to have a “normal” life, but to remain competitive, well, that’s another thing. I needed my legs to respond properly to be able to run, and that was hard. Mentally, I was fine, but physically it had affected me, and although I was okay, I was slower”.

Okay, now it was time for the Bay of Biscay question, and I can tell you I was glad there was a big stretch of water separating us. A very big stretch…Now I already knew the answer to this, but I had to ask it, as it’s been doing the rounds ever since I first went, and was probably around before that too. But even as an inexperienced runner I knew it was rubbish, but some people just can’t lay off telling lies or repeating rubbish, as they were born to bullshit, so here’s his answer to my Bay of Biscay question. Oh, and it doesn’t really need any translation, I think any of you would get the drift of his answer, and the force of it, but I’ll do it in English anyway. With a bit of his Spanish left in… I’ve mixed and joined his spoken and written answers here.

Tim: Julen, I have to ask this, even though I know the answer: Is it true that when you ran, you used other running friends as “blockers”, so you could have a good run?

Julen: These stories are just such immense, enormous stupidity. Really, tremendous rubbish. (Chorrada, gilipollez, anormalidad, ignorancia, estupidez…en fin)…these comments show an extreme ignorance of what represents an encierro, of how it is, of what happens during it”.

Phew, thank you Bay of Biscay…he didn’t shout down the line or get angry, but the real force of his feelings about these ridiculous lies certainly made themselves felt. We went on to have a little chat about it, the gist being that no matter how good you are, you just cannot organise a group of people to run in a certain way so that you have a clear path to run in. To speak very generally, for those who don’t know, I’m going to state the obvious… the run is fairly unpredictable, some runners are pretty unpredicatable too, and the bulls, well the bulls don’t behave in any way that anyone can really control, once things start to get messy. To put it mildly!

I still hear stories today about “the blockers”, but with some people, you just can’t fight their bullshit. They were born to bullshit, they’re members of the Bullshit Peña , and they are not going to change, sadly. Shame.

As someone who ran from 1984 to 1999, when I first did it I didn’t really have a clue. I’d never seen the route, walked the run, talked to anyone about it or anything. I didn’t know it was closed at certain points to funnel everybody in near the beginning, I didn’t know the authorities slowly opened up the route so the crowds could move forwards and gave a little more room for everyone…I really didn’t know much at all. So that first run of 1984 found me half way down Santo Domingo with the friend I’d travelled down with, thinking to myself, well, this is rather narrow and crowded…I could tell which way the bulls were going to come, obviously, but as I rather nervously had a cigarette and realised that the place was getting ever more crowded, (and I was sure the street was getting narrower, too), I also noticed that there wasn’t really any way of escape, unless you were Spiderman, just high walls on both sides and a downhill run towards the bulls one way, or an uphill run and hopefully freedom the other way. By the time the first of the bells started to mark 8 o’clock, I could swear the street had narrowed to about a yard wide.

Tensión en el callejón.

Well, the 8 o’clock chimes sounded, there was a whoosh! as the rocket went up and then a loud bang!! and…my first run. Oh…my…gawd…And I have never, ever, forgotten it. Holy mother of all the saints…

Over the years I ran most parts of the run but soon settled to a place that I just felt comfortable with, and I wondered if Madina had always run the top end of Estafeta. Just like the bulls during the bullfight when they find a spot they feel comfortable in to fight, called the “querencia”, many runners end up finding their own encierro querencia on the route, and stick to it.

“My first two runs (he first went in 1971) were from the Town Hall square, to Mercaderes, until the beginning of the Estafeta. On my 3rd run I positioned myself about 40 meters up from the Estafeta curve, as the herd were pretty defined in position having taken the curve, and from there I would try to make the bull ring, (they were different times then!), and you could make it, but over the years I moved up Estafeta, to the last section practically opposite Bar Fitero, and from there I’d run into the ring”.

On another thread, I’d always wanted to run in some of the other towns I heard about in my first couple of years there, but never did, but for those of you who want to, or have, here are some of the other places he has run and what he thinks about them.

Tim: What other runs did you do? (And I love his description of the Falces run).

Madina: “I’ve run for many years in Tafalla, they were great encierros amongst friends. San Sebastian de Los Reyes, a fast and dangerous run and very powerful. Falces (for those who don’t know it’s on a hillside), is like a mad dash downhill escaping from a herd of mad cows. Cuellar, a playful encierro and very beautiful. Tudela I actually think is one of the great ones. Ampuero is curiously lovely, and is run at a decent time of the day. And Deba, the only bull run in Guipuzkoa”.

He went on to add: “I don’t understand those who say they love to run but then only ever run in Pamplona, because if they love the bulls there are many good encierros around”.

Tim: Do you think you’ll ever run again? What do you do now to take its place?

Madina: “Some decisions have to be taken at certain times, and I think I made mine (retiring from running) at the most apt time. If I did run again it would be in Tudela. I’ve been trying a few other things to keep the adrenalin going, adventure sports and such like”. For those who don’t know, Julen gave up running due to the birth of his daughter. It has obviously been an incredibly hard decision for him for sure, but made for absolutely the right reason.

Now here’s a question for everyone who has done a fair number of runs: what was your best run, or your favourite one? For me that’s easy, as there weren’t too many good ones, but for someone like Madina, who ran for 40 years, and is widely acknowledged as one of the great runners of all time, well…would he have an answer to that one?

Oh yes…

“It was July 8th, 1981, with Aguirres bulls, running 200 meters with the 6 bulls, and also at the final section I was with Joe Distler, Atanasio, my brother Pepelu, Miguel Eguiluz and others I don’t remember, all good runners, and all, and this is important, dressed in whites…it was quite evidently a different era. Along with being great runners, there was much more respect in those days, something that now has disappeared”.

I love hearing peoples old stories about fiesta, whether about the running or the partying, and obviously someone who has such a history as Madina does has a few tales to tell. Here are just a couple more.

“I began running in 1971, and I never missed a year. In 1978 I was doing military service in Madrid, (it was obligatory in Spain until the late 1990’s), and as July arrived I asked permission if I could go and run with the bulls. Naturally my captain told me no, but as I was giving personal sport and fitness training lessons to the bigwigs, I told them that if they didn’t give me permission to go then morally I felt I couldn’t continue to train them. And so the Commandant forced the captain to allow me to go and hence I made it to Pamplona.

But I only arrived at midday on the 8th, so I didn’t run that day, but I did go to the bullfight and so experienced the arrival of the police into the ring, (it was the year of the riots mentioned in last months piece that caused the suspension of the entire fiesta), and lived the general chaos that enveloped the place, the rubber bullets, the tear gas, and the confrontations with the police. I was drunk and went to punch a policeman, but my brother Xabier grabbed me and got me out of there…

There was rioting in the streets, and the death of German. (German Rodriguez, the young man shot by the authorities, again mentioned last month and a whole story on its own). It was a dark episode, everything was still too close to Franco’s military dictatorship, and though he had died on 20-11-75 the system still wasn’t ready for certain things”.

Well, that’s about it. A couple of things that shone through our chat were his love and passion for the run, of course, but also his absolute respect for the run and its traditions. And as for certain runners, when I asked him if he had anything else to say, well, he was worried about giving names in case he forgot anyone, but he had already mentioned some during our chat and so, at the risk of leaving anyone out, he wrote this:

“I can only give thanks for all those moments that I have lived and for the great friends that I have, and there are too many people to be able to mention everybody…but some, yes I can name them. Firstly I always remember someone I consider a visionary, literally a maestro, who took on and became thanks to his charisma, a part of a group of youngsters running the encierros of La Ribera around Lerin, and it’s he who most influenced my style of running and of understanding the encierro…Tito Murillo. Another great is Atanasio…and there are few who are in love with the encierro and respect it and run like Joe Distler. Another top man is Miguel Eguiluz, and of course my colleague, Jokin (Zuasti)”.

And then, like the man he is, he ended with, “I don’t want to name people, for fear of forgetting someone”. That’s my favourite kind of runner…thinking about others. It shows such respect. This after all is the man who, having run into the ring with the bulls, would then run back out again to pick up any stragglers…and goodness knows how many people he saved in his time by attracting the bull from runners who were in serious trouble. He has described one of his friends, who is also one of Los Diviños, (and that lot are a whole story in themselves too), as a “maestro”. Well, I think that I can truthfully say then, with the safety of the Bay of Biscay dividing us, that Julen Madina was a maestro too. A Bull Runner’s Runner.

That seems as good a place as any to leave it, for now. So muchas gracias Maestro, for your time and patience in chatting to me and then following it up thanks to my multi-tasking incompetence, with the written word. Eskerrik asko.

Oh and that smell? That essence of primeval times past? A bottle of Patxaran to my favourite description, if any of you can…all I can think of is that the bulls, certainly when you’re under them, smell of hot, dried, earthy curried dung.

MEDIEVAL – The Gateways of Old Iruña.

I was going to write this little bit for the July piece, as that’s when most of us will be heading off to Spain and it just seemed like the right time…but it’s June already and I’m too excited so I’m going to include it in this months bull runnings. I use the term gateway above, but I just mean any of the old ways into Pamplona , be it under one of the arches or over one of the bridges, or along a dusty track…Although I think the word “portal” does make it sound like the entrance into another world…which it is.

Ever since I first went to Pamplona there comes a point near the very end of the journey that I think…yes!…I’m here, this is it, finally… Pamplona ! And that bit is when whatever car I’m driving passes under the Portal Nuevo. For it’s then that I know that I have arrived, and left the motorway and the outer suburbs behind and entered my beloved Iruña.

Once I’ve driven up the hill that Pamplona was built on, (remember, the city is about 1450 feet above sea level), and passed under the Portal Nuevo, I’ll see on my right the Taconera Park and then the Hotel Tres Reyes, and on my left the old village or burgo (independent borough) of San Cernin and the church where the statue of San Fermin is kept, La Iglesia de San Lorenzo.

And I know I have arrived. Passing under that archway always gives me a buzz, whatever time of year it is I’m visiting, but especially so when it’s fiesta time. The original city is off to my left inside what is now known as the Casco Viejo, the old town, which was originally just a tiny village (we are going back a thousand years here), called Irunea, or Navarreria, which is the street where the La Mejillonera, the Mussel Bar is, and leads up to the Cathedral.

Then another village was started around 1090 – 1100, the aforementioned Burgo de San Cernin, and finally the around the same time but separated by a moat, the Poblacion de San Nicolas. It’s fascinating stuff, as all 3 districts fought each other until merging to become Pamplona , but that is also a story for another day.

I wanted to mention the gateway because there are four of these constructions that mean a lot to me in Pamplona , as they all signify something special for me. Another one is the Puente de San Pedro, and this one is a cute little stone bridge dating from almost certainly Roman times, and I first saw it in 1984 with the crowd I’d been hanging out with in the gutter. We’d heard that there was a public open air swimming pool, with showers and a bar…and we found it, and there it was…a fiesta oasis for those of us living in the streets. Seeing that little bridge meant a shower and food and rest, sorely needed after a night out on the grass in the square where we lived or the cobbles of the Estafeta and the beer shops.

Even when we found accommodation of sorts, (a floor in an accounting school on the Estafeta), we still headed towards that bridge and went to the pool…seeing that bridge became like a crossing to a parallel world…but a sane one. Years later we had a flat in one of the suburbs, Rochapea, and that pretty little crossing meant one of two things, depending on which way we were going: bed…or party!

Just up from it, as we walked into town, was the real portal into another world, a crazy, insane, parallel world of fiesta, and that was the Portal de Francia, or Zumalacarregui.

Again though, depending on which way you were going, it had two different meanings. As it was the gateway right at the edge of the old town, it meant either sleep and siesta…or fiesta and insanity. Oh happy daze…

Finally there is El Puente de La Magdalena, and I love this one because from it you can see one of my favourite spots in all the world, and from that favourite spot I can see the bridge, and wonder what it must have been like centuries ago approaching the town over these bridges or entering through those gateways.

Ah well, not long to go at all now before the madness begins again and we can enter through whatever portal the parallel world that is Pamplona in fiesta. I’ll leave you with something that one Bernie Neumatico found a while ago, and though it’s not Pamplona …it may just put a smile on your face and get you in the mood.

Ya falta mucho menos. Viva San Fermin!

May the 5th be with you.

For the very merry month of May, there is a very mixed bovine bag of bull runnings, but why don’t we start with an old nursery rhyme, as it seems a nice gentle way to begin things…

In the merry month of May,
When green leaves begin to spring,
Little lambs do skip like fairies,
Birds do couple, build and sing.

Ahhh…so, what do we have then for this month’s meanderings. Well, I thought I’d try and update the little ditty above and make it a little more relevant to fiesta and taurine matters, and there’s a great clip from Andalusian TV filmed on the Miura Ranch, showing how the bulls are rounded up. Then there’s the story of the day a super hero visited Pamplona, a couple of photos of the post encierro herd taking a stroll back to the corrals, a “spot the difference” type thing to celebrate the 90th birthday of something, and a small but I think rather touching addition to last months words from his friends regarding the passing of Joe Moskulak.

Finally, a clip of the big summer music hit in Spain (and hence fiesta) from 1976. Why? Because I found out about it, and as music can take us back so wonderfully to a particular place and point in time, I hope that for those lucky enough to be there that year it will bring back some magic memories…and maybe some happy hangovers from hell too! Whether you like it or not, I bet you’ll have the “tune” in your head all day long. Sorry about that…

So, back to that sweet old nursery rhyme that celebrates the arrival of May, and in my part of the world at least, the start of summer. Hopefully. But May also heralds Star Wars Day, and “May the Fourth be with You”. But I’m not talking about nursery rhymes here or Luke Bullrunner, but the “Escalera” of course, and the fifth day in May which is, for all us Sanfermineros, our day.

Of course I hope that if you make it for San Fermin the force will be with you, (goodness knows we need it!), but I also hope that as we approach ever more quickly the start of fiesta, that May the Fifth will indeed with you too. Because there’s really not very long to go now…

Maybe an updated, Pamplona and fiesta related version of the little poem above should read:
Ah, in the merry month of May,
When fiesta’s about to spring,
Big bulls do roam the prairies,
And it’s close to San Fermin.

Okay, okay, no more poems, I promise.

It is around about now that the bulls have been chosen for the bullfight in what ever part of the country they’ll be going to, and hence in Pamplona’s case for the bull run too of course. Which bulls are going where is a closely guarded secret, but I was sent a couple of years ago by my friends at Kukuxumusu the great clip above of just how they round-up the bulls when their destiny is almost upon them, and you can see that clip above. And yes, they’re being rounded up to go to Pamplona.

It’s from Andalucian TV I think, and apart from being fascinating, it also shows one bull, Peleon, that just refuses to be rounded up, until Antonio Miura himself decides enough is enough, and he saddles up to do the job himself. It’s a dangerous job, (you know what happens in the bullring when the bull attacks the picador on his horse…if anything untoward happens the picador is immediately surrounded by the cuadrilla, the team), well, here you can see Antonio Miura practically on his own, and sometimes his horse is just inches from the bull. It’s superb horsemanship, no doubt from a man who, as they say, could probably ride before he could walk.

The Day Superman Buzzed The Bullring

As I’ve mentioned before and as many of you know, anything can happen during San Fermin…actually, for those of us who return to Pamplona anytime outside those magical dates of the 5th to the 15th of July, we know it’s not just during fiesta that anything can happen. Why, I once saw Elvis Presley get out of a taxi, honest to god…anyway, one year during the bull fight, of all things, Superman swooped over the crowd and eventually landed in the ring.

Now you may think that I’m, well, how can I put it, bullknitting here, about Superman and San Fermin, but I promise you I’m not. There is photographic proof! It was back in 1979, on Sunday July the 8th, on one of those hot fiesta days that when you’re inside the bullring the heat is becomes like a furnace.

There’s a bit in one of Johnny Cash’s live prison albums, either the Folsom Prison one or the San Quentin one, where he asks a guard to get him something from “that bag that’s got all the songs I stole in it”, well, as ever with any of these pieces from the archives, I’ve nicked them from either a book or the papers, in this case Diario de Navarra’s Supplement Special from 2009.

Now, the 8th of July was a special date and 1979 a special year, as just one year before another kind of heat had permeated the bull ring and the surroundings, causing the suspension of the entire fiesta after a riot started due to the politics in the region, and the shooting dead by the authorities of a young man, German Rodriguez. This is not the time or the place to go into that, but it has to be mentioned as General Franco had only died in late 1975, and democracy in the country had only just recently been formalised when elections were held on June 15th, 1977.

So imagine the scene: it’s exactly one year after the riots of ’78 that caused the entire fiesta to be suspended, and just over two years since the first free elections had been held since the 1930’s. No one is quite sure how fiesta will take off, what might happen, and how not just the authorities but the public will react. Democracy is in its infancy, politics are on a knife edge, terrorism is rife, and there are doubts and worries floating over the whole town that year.

Whatever atmosphere was permeating not just fiesta, but the city that year, Superman’s arrival certainly added something special to the goings on.

Okay, okay, I bet you’re thinking, “Hey, that can’t be Superman, he doesn’t smoke”, (but he does, you know, as I saw him several times smoking outside Bar Txoko in the mid-eighties). He must have been down on his luck as he was doing some busking street theatre act…but he was smoking.

And no, his off duty name wasn’t Clark Kent, that would be a silly name for a Navarran to have. His name is Fernando Lizaur Gomez, and he initiated one of the greatest acts of spontaneity ever seen in fiesta. Earlier that year he was so impressed after seeing the first Superman film with Christopher Reeve, that as fiesta approached he phoned four Californian friends that he knew from previous years and asked them if they could bring a Superman costume with them when they flew over for San Fermin. No sooner asked than done, and he met his friends when they arrived at Barajas airport in Madrid, and after arriving at their hotel in the centre of town the windows of a 3rd floor room were thrown open and there appeared, to general amusement of the passers by below, Superman. With a moustache.

Once back in Pamplona the plan was hatched, and that hot Sunday afternoon saw Fernando with his peña, Anaitasuna, and the band, going around the streets on the way to the bullfight, with said joker in full costume, and the balconies filling up as word went around that Superman was in town. He managed to get into the bullring due to knowing a couple of the doormen, and once he was amongst his friends he remained hidden during the whole of the starting proceedings and the period of the first bull.

Then it was the turn of the second bull. He was from the ranch of Guardiola Fantoni and was called Ollero and weighed 505kg. The torero was from Jerez, Fransisco Nuñez, known as “Curillo”. During this fight Fernando made his way cautiously down from his place where he had been hiding to the edge of one of the tiers and, with cigar in mouth and pose perfect, suddenly stood up on one of the ledges and made his entrance.

Well, there was widespread laughter and cheering all round. Everybody stopped looking at the bullfight and turned their attention to this character. Then suddenly, and without warning, Superman launched himself off the edge…where he was caught by his friends below, who began to “glide” him around the area. Superman was flying! There was uproar in the ring, of course, in the nicest possible way. Superman then noticed a lady dressed up in a wedding dress, who beckoned him over to her (this is all true, I promise) and, ever the gentleman, he “flew” towards her and landed next to her on the little balustrade.

The crowd all chanted a phrase that is shouted at all Spanish weddings that basically means: kiss – “que se besen, que se besen”. “Kiss, kiss, kiss,” sang the crowd…and so they did. There was a huge ovation and roars all round. But then he noticed that the bullfighter Currillo was having problems killing the bull. A new flight took him nearer towards the ring, at which the crowd all shouted: “Let Superman kill it! Let Superman kill it!”

For those of us who know the special kind of madness that takes over the locals of that town when those “Pamplona moments” happen, well, we can only imagine the mix of hilarity and good natured pandemonium that was going on inside the ring. And, no doubt contrarily, how nervous the Policia Nacional and the Guardia Civil were getting.

Well, the idea of this particular Superman killing the bull himself obviously complicated the script, and Fernando needed to buy some time, and quickly. So in all seriousness, he posed a question to different parts of the ring: “Hey, you lot, do you want me to kill the bull?” “Yesss” came back the reply. “And you lot, do you want me to kill it?” “Siii” was the answer. “And all of you over there, do you also want me…” Well, finally, Curillo did his job, the bull was killed…and Superman was saved!

By this time, Fernando was parched, and somewhere in the ring he bumped into a local councillor, who hugged him, which made the crowd shout and clap once more. He then made his exit where he met another local dignitary who offered him a drink and his thirst was quenched.

When the bullfight was finally over he joined the peña down on the sand, and eventually made it back with the band to their club house. And so ended what Diario de Navarra in their pre-fiesta supplement of 2009 called, “one of the most spectacular, enjoyable, spontaneous, funny and crowd-pleasing acts in the history of our fiestas”.

Back at home, his mother had been listening to the bullfight commentary of Pepe Trujillo live on Radio Popular, and had heard about the arrival of Superman in the bullring. She of course had no idea it was her son until he went home to say hello…still dressed up as Superman. We can only imagine the look on her face as he popped his head round the doorway and said “hello, mum”, and her reaction, he says, was of course one of priceless incredulity, saying “It was you? My son?!…”

Back on the streets, he lived up to his character by helping anyone in trouble. This, amazingly, included copying a scene from the film where Superman saved a busload of passengers from falling into a ravine. With the full complicity of the driver and its passengers, “Superman” saved the day by stopping one of the local buses in it’s tracks and “lifting” it up.

What had started out as just a prank in the ring had become a truly memorable and yes, moveable farce, a joke that developed it’s own momentum and not only flew around the ring but also spilled out onto the streets and lasted for hours…a happy and joyous event in stark contrast to the tragic occurrence of just one year before, and one that has gone down in fiesta history. Hollywood would have been proud.

The night carried on in one long party, as you’d expect.

The stories in the press the next day and beyond were impressive. Papers from all over Spain carried the story, including from El Pais, and the journalist Joaquin Vidal: “The best cape work (alluding to what the bullfighters do), was done by Superman on the 8th of July, the day of the anniversary of the grave events of the previous year, that broke the tension within the ring. Ole! to the joker who was that bizarre, flying and moustachioed Superman”.

In Days Gone By.

Things have to change with the times, I suppose, but it is rather a shame sometimes. This year is the 40th anniversary of the last year that the herd, after the bull run was over, was transferred on hoof as it were, back to the corral. After all they needed to be returned from where they’d started from, they couldn’t hang around the bullring all day.

So as the photo from 1965 above shows, after the mornings fun was over the herd were taken by the shepherds from the Plaza de Toros all the way back to the Corrales de Gas in Rochapea, through the people and the traffic going about their daily business. However, as traffic increased year on year something had to be done, and so it was that 1972 became the last year that the shepherds guided the herd back along the crowded streets. A shame, but understandable. Since then they have been taken by truck.

I just wanted to add one more thing I received about Joe Moskaluk, who passed away in March and was mentioned in last month’s piece. It’s another quote from someone who knew him, and apart from being a lovely thing to say, it’s also a nice excuse to use another photo of him, because the man just exudes charisma, does he not? It’s from James Curly Baillor, and this is what he wrote:

One more for Joe Moskulak

Happy Birthday, Plaza de Toros.

The present Plaza de Toros in Pamplona is 90 years old this year, so for those who don’t know, can you spot “the difference” between the picture above, and the one below? Obviously they are different photos, but can you see the major difference in the direction of the run?

If you look carefully at the photo above, you can just see a first floor “covered balcony” overhanging the street, with a large, wide arched doorway at street level to the bottom left, with the runners running past it, and the bulls behind them having emerged from the Estafeta.

Now, that photo above is a great shot isn’t it? The runners are heading towards the ring, and in the background you can see the fair, where one day would be the Telefonos building. But look closely at the top right of the photo, and you can see, yup, that overhanging covered balcony, with the large, wide, arched doorway below and to the left…and it’s only when you look at the two pictures together that you can see the final part of the run is going in two completely different directions.

In 1922 they inaugurated the new bullring, which was built a couple of hundred yards to the east of the old one, and ever since that year, runners, as they have exited Estafeta, have turned left to the “new” ring, and not right as they used to do, in days gone by…More on that another day, as I bet you’d like to hear about how they used to run through the square, too, once upon a time…

The San Fermin song from 1976.

For me and my crowd, (and know doubt this went for many other groups of foreigners too), apart from just looking forward to returning for fiesta, there were other little things we looked forward to. For example, what would the fiesta poster be like? There was no way of knowing, as there is now, you had to wait till you got there…or at least got close! Now of course everything, but everything is out there for all to see, and it does take some of the mystery away, but yet adds to the fun in a different way as we all get to comment on it.
Anyway, I digress…another thing we looked forward to was to see what would be the big music hit of the summer, and hence fiesta. Having read in one of my old papers that the summer smash in Spain for 1976 was, well, this song by this man, I’ll leave it with you. Whether you like it or not, I hope it makes you smile. Fernando Estoso and “La Ramona”.

Take it away, Ramona! Ya falta menos! Viva San Fermin!