Imagen de portada de Jordi Cohen.
As many of you know, whether it was your first year in Pamplona for fiesta, or perhaps your fiftieth, it doesn’t matter how much, or little, you know about what goes on there, but that extraordinary town has a way of constantly giving out surprises, and often when you least expect them. I must have had a million magic moments since my first year, (every time I laugh is one of them), and I’d like to share just a couple.
I’m not talking about the bullrun now, as that is a whole different ball game, or should I say bull game, when it comes to surprises, but rather what goes on in fiesta apart from the bull run. And as it’s December, and approaching what for many can be a magical time, Christmas and New Year, I thought I’d use this last months Kukuxumusu page, before the first Escalera starts, to mention one or two of them.
Okay, the bull run. I know I said I wasn’t going to talk about it, but I don’t mean that bull run, the encierro, I mean the other one, the one that doesn’t happen any more. The encierro txiki. The what? Well, the first year I was there, 1984, there were enough shocks in the normal bull run to last a lifetime, especially as in those days there wasn’t the easy access there is now to all the info you’d ever need to find out about it (and ruin the experience a bit, no doubt), so for foreigners like me who didn’t speak the lingo at the time, we knew there was a fiesta, and some bull runs.
Sometime during the week, coming out of the ring not just after the encierro, but after the cow and knackered bull run-a-round, las vaquillas (and nobody had told me about that, either!), instead of heading straight back to the square and the bit of grass by the gutter that I and my new found friends had began to call the “house” – because that’s where we lived – I walked instead back into Estafeta to get something to drink. The shops and bars were all open again, the barriers still up though, mostly…sort of…but there were people in the road and fiesta, street style, was back in full swing. But there was something strange in the air it seemed…
Suddenly, a rocket went off, and a truck that was parked halfway down Estafeta opened up its doors, and down some planks came running…what the fudging heck…more bulls! Holy Cow! I jogged to the side with my litre of beer and joined everyone else to watch, incredulous, as six much smaller bulls ran past, with young teenagers laughing by their side, and even younger children running with their hand being held by a father or older brother, concentrating hard…What! They even have bull runs for children…I couldn’t believe it at first, but it must have been around then that I realised, subconsciously, that this crazy town would never stop surprising me no matter how often I came.
Another year, togged up in red and whites by now of course, and a little more knowlegable, I went to have a look at the encierillo, the night run. It was 1991 and I was trying to impress a girl about how much I knew about fiesta. So, yes, I knew about the night run, but the surprise was I didn’t know how touching it would be. We found a spot halfway between the bridge and the corral, it was about 11 o’clock, and part of the wonder of the whole thing was the silence, after the craziness of the town. In the gloom, and the quiet, you could hear the hooves of the bulls and the herd as they ran up the hill, but that was the only noise, as everyone, but everyone, held their breath – though I swear I could hear the animals breathing – as they passed by and carried on up to the corral. It was a beautiful sight but hauntingly sad, knowing that for the bulls at least, it was their last night on earth.
One more, perhaps. This one happened thanks to my friend Manu from Kukuxumusu, who told me about something that was going to happen one morning at the Church of San Lorenzo, which is where the statue of San Fermin is kept. This was last year, 2010, and two things were to happen that day, one we knew about, and one we didn’t. There was to be a runners mass, but this was to be a special one to remember and commemorate the death of Daniel Jimeno Romero, a young runner who had died during the encierro exactly one year before. His family, all Sanfermineros, (fans of the fiesta), were to be there too, but in the end they found it too emotionally hard and stayed away.
However, the mass went ahead, and as I had never been inside the church that is, let’s face it, pretty central to the whole party (no San Fermin…no fiesta!), I found it a touching experience. I’m not particularily religious, but I find churches soothing and comforting, and being inside what I now think of as San Fermins’ house, with loads of runners, young and old, dressed in their whites, with San Fermin sitting at the altar, resplendent in his golden red, while the priest, Santos Villanueva Eskujuri said mass, was incredibly moving. Another special Pamplona moment, completely unexpected.
But as always with that amazing, beautiful town, that wasn’t all. After the priest had finished, while telling everyone he knew where he could find them (at any of the nearby bars!), the doors to the church opened and sunlight flooded in. Outside, suprisingly, were all the giants and cabezudos, and the kilikis and zaldiko-maldikos. Now that little lot are a story on their own, but as it was the 150th anniversary of the Giants, los gigantes, this enlightened priest had decided to celebrate that fact.
I was still inside the church at the time, and it was filling up with even more people than were at the mass. Suddenly I saw through the open doorway one of the giants begin to fall, but it was as if in slow motion…down he went, gently sliding sideways…except he wasn’t falling, he was being tilted onto his side so he could be carefully carried in, through the portal, and into the church. And in this way all the giants were brought inside the church, followed by the full entourage of cabezudos, kilikis and zaldikos-maldikos.
Well, stuff was said, something was sung, and then the txistularis (the pipers) began to play, and, lined up all the way to the altar, the giants came alive, and began to dance, right in front of San Fermin, in his own house.
I don’t think many people knew this was going to happen, and the looks on some peoples faces, including mine no doubt, were priceless. I swear even San Fermin himself had a smile…
Yet again, Pamplona had worked its magic. And it always has and it always does, and it always will. Not long to go now until the first escalera. ¡Ya falta menos! ¡Viva San Fermin!
