Sanfermin.com launched a short fast survey on its different social networks last Thursday afternoon on the question of changing the dates of the Sanfermin fiestas so as to ensure that there were always two weekends available. The results reached a very clear conclusion: “It would be simply unthinkable to have the opening day’s Txupinazo on any other date than the 6th of July”. This option had the largest backing of the participants – 80% (226 votes, from 284 participants and a total of 356 responses it was possible to choose more than one option to each question).
The survey proposed the option of always starting the Sanfermin fiestas on the Saturday before the 7th of July, thus ensuring that there would always be two weekends over the eight days. When the fiestas do fall in this way on some calendar years, it brings a higher number of visitors to the fiestas and it makes the services industry in Pamplona more profitable. This double-weekend also influences the number of international visitors which tends to be higher when there are two weekends over the fiesta period. (As occurred in 2014 and which will occur again in 2017).
The options open to the interviewees in the Sanfermin.com survey were: (1) to leave the dates as they are, (2) to open a debate on this idea of changing dates and to consider the possibility of celebrating a seventh of July in the middle of fiestas. In addition, three options were set down within the multi-response question such as “I could not conceive of theTxupinazo opening rocket on any other date than the 6th of July”– “This would be good for the service industry and for visitors but not for the local people” – “Yes, change would be a good idea and I would support it for 2015.” The interviewees also had a further option of adding a more personal and individual opinion.
From all the options, the most selected was the question of the Txupinazo change of date which was conceived as something unthinkable. As can be seen on the graph, the second option most voted was “To leave the fiestas as they are at present” and then followed by “I would not like to have a 7th of July right in the middle of the fiestas days as proposed”. The options which were most clear to the interviewees was that the fiestas should be left as they are at present, that the Txupinazo should be on the 6th and that the saint’s day should be on the 7th of July. In other words, the general public is largely not open to the idea of making any calendar changes to the fiestas.
In addition to the responses to the survey sheet – which were anonymous – on the Sanfermin Facebook page, the “posts”on this survey were seen by 6.737 people. Of these, 208 indicated that they liked the idea of the survey, 11 posted them on their walls and 32 people published commentaries. In Twitter, 1.966 people saw the survey and they left 8 FAVS and 4 RTs. Follow us on Facebook and you can take part and check out the comments which largely agree with the results of the survey. That is to say, leave everything as it is and don’t move either the 6th or the 7th and don’t link the fiestas to purely benefits.
In the future, we plan to carry out some further surveys on themes related to the Sanfermin fiestas. Getting a close picture of what how the public see the fiestas can always be useful and expedient.
