Good read about Running at Pamplona
Why I run with the bulls year after year after year - Jim Hollander, International Herald Tribune.
I return each year to Pamplona, in the northern reaches of Spain, for the Fiesta de San Fermin, better known as the running of the bulls.
I first wandered into Pamplona in 1963 at the age of 13, towed there by my father, who had just moved to the still-sleepy Costa del Sol. Maybe my father was paying homage, in his very reserved way, to Ernest Hemingway, who immortalized the fiesta and who had killed himself just before the start of fiesta two years earlier, or maybe to the "lost generation" itself. He brought the whole family along.
At that point I hadn't heard of Hemingway, nor of James Michener, who also wrote about the fiesta and some of the foreign characters who ran the bulls, but I had been introduced to the world of the "toro bravo." I was intrigued by the spectacle of the bullfight, and I was in awe of these majestic, wild animals. Bulls got into my blood.
During the week-long festival, Pamplona is entirely engrossed in having a good time. But the pace and gusto of the Fiesta de San Fermin revolves around the "toro bravo," the fighting bull. There are bull runs each morning, bull selections ("sorteos") each noontime and bullfights each evening. Bull stew is served for dinner and people talk bulls throughout the day - in bars, on corners, in cafés, over dinner, in the market.
I didn't run on that first visit. But I returned the next year without my father and mustered up the courage to sneak into the street and run with the herd as it passed - thankfully - in the middle of the narrow cobblestone street about three meters away. I was sprinting and trying to make myself one with the buildings on my right as I heard the hooves closing in and as the crowd elbowed past me in panic and enthusiasm. The fear was intense, the pleasure even greater, and I survived.
And I returned, This year is my 38th in Pamplona. I ran with the bulls some 90 times until 1977, when at the age of 28 I found myself tossed and about to get gored by two huge Miura bulls. I kept cool enough not to rise up or flee and the bulls kicked me, sat on me and kept me from walking without a cane for a few days, but did not connect with their horns, which passed inches away from my upper torso and neck.
The young American who wandered into the fiesta in 1995 was not so lucky. Matthew Tassio rose up after falling in front of the bulls and was almost disemboweled by a horn in his lower stomach. He died before the medics could get him to a hospital.
I returned the very next day as a limping photojournalist, but no longer a runner. Since then I've photographed every "encierro" without missing a run. My mouth still dries up before the rocket blast that announces the bulls, maybe from an appreciation of the dangers those boys in the street will face.
The streets have become more crowded year after year. In the 1920s, gentlemen ran in suits and rope-soled "alparagatos"; now hordes of college kids sprint in running shoes and flashy t-shirts.
If you're tempted to run, first watch, and take note of the panic, the pushing, the insanity of it. Talk to some experienced runners. Not many will recommend it unless you have a deep sentiment for the bulls. The run is about the bulls, nothing else - certainly not other runners.
To run with the bulls is to get inside the bull's aura on the streets, moving close to the majestic beast and catching the glint of recognition that comes from meeting his eye and feeling totally at peace. The runner must have the utmost respect for the bull, or the magic won't happen.
There is no glory in the run. There is personal satisfaction - of having seen the bulls, surely of having survived, surely, but above all of having run with the bulls, which is different from just running the bulls.
So, 51 weeks have passed and I'm here again. The fiesta is in full swing - as Papa Hemingway wrote in 1926, "the fiesta exploded. There is no other way to describe it." The first encierro ran without a serious injury.
Like the townspeople, I know that most of the foreigners who have come for a quick thrill will leave after a few drunken days, turning the town back to the Pamplonicas and those lucky outsiders who love the bulls and the "alegria."
!Viva San Fermin. Gora San Fermin!
(Jim Hollander is chief photographer of the European Pressphoto Agency, based in Jerusalem. He is the author of ''Run To The Sun,'' a documentary of 25 years of Pamplona's Fiesta de San Fermin.)
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