I Ran With The Bulls And I Blame Hemingway

Personally, I blame that macho-istic bastard Hemingway for my foolhardy decision to run with the bulls of Pamplona several years ago.

Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel, “The Sun Also Rises,” brought worldwide attention to Pamplona’s bizarre age-old festival of allowing bulls to run through the streets as they please, running over and goring those mad enough to run with them. Hemingway created an international pilgrimage of machismo to Pamplona’s San Fermin festival. For some of those pilgrims, that journey has led to a gory martyrdom.

But gory martyrdom is what the San Fermin festival is all about. Saint Fermin, Pamplona’s patron saint, was martyred in Roman times by being drug through the streets by bulls somewhere in France. This grisly demise is honored by Pamplona’s residents every year in July with a huge week-long festival. In the morning the bulls and the fools run. In the afternoon bullfights are held in the Plaza de Toros Arena.

The rest of the day and on through the night time is spent in merry-making. Various different parades of floats, musicians, and banner-waving drunks periodically sway and weave their way through the crowds. People will party until they drop where they stand from exhaustion, but the party just rolls on. It's like Mardi Gras with bulls.

Hemingway’s spirit seems to haunt the festival. I could just imagine old Ernest slouched jauntily in a doorway with a drink in one hand and Sangria stains down his white shirt as he watched the festival with approving eyes. In one of the streets, there is a bust of Hemingway wearing a bull runner’s bandanna.

The night before my run I was dancing and drinking in the company of some young local senoritas. One girl I particularly fancied was a dark-haired girl named Bettina.