The festival of San Fermin is a deeply-rooted celebration held annually from 6 July to 14 July in the city of Pamplona (Navarra), in northern Spain. While its most famous event is the encierro, the running of the bulls, the week-long celebration involves many other traditional and folkloric events. It is known locally as Sanfermines and is held in honor of Saint Fermin, the patron saint of Pamplona and Navarre as a whole. Its events were central to the plot of The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway. It has become probably the most internationally renowned fiesta in Spain.

The Encierro involves running in front of bulls down an 825-metre (0.51 mile) stretch of cobbled streets of a section of the old town of Pamplona. The biggest day is 7 July, when thousands of people accompany the effigy of Saint Fermin along the streets of Pamplona, along with dancers and street entertainers, such as carnival giants.

Each morning’s event starts at 8 A.M. Competitors are clad in white, with a red handkerchief (the pañuelo) tied about their necks, and a red sash (the faja) tied around their waist. The runners gather in an area at the beginning of the route called Cuesta de Santo Domingo, where they sing three times an ode before a statue of San Fermin placed in a niche in a wall there:

A San Fermín pedimos, por ser nuestro patrón, nos guíe en el encierro dándonos su bendición. (”We ask San Fermín, as our Patron, to guide us through the Bull Run and give us his blessing.”)

Anyone who survives a close encounter with a panicky bull is said to have been protected by San Fermin’s cloak.

The encierro begins with the letting off of two rockets, the cohetes. One firecracker announces the release of the bulls from their corral, and a second firecracker signals that the last bull has left the corral.

The event is dangerous. Since 1924, 15 people have been killed (the most recent, a 22-year-old American in 1995 and a local Basque man who died in 2004 several months subsequent to the run after falling into a coma), and over 200 have been seriously injured. Most injuries nowadays, however, are caused by the stampede of participants seeking to run away from the powerful bulls. The organizers release multi-lingual guides (with safety tips) to running the event: it is strongly recommended that these be read beforehand.

It must be said that in more recent years, beginning with the publication of Ernest Hemingway’s novel in 1926 about the event called The Sun Also Rises, a large percentage of runners are tourists. Many tourists have made the event much more dangerous due to their lack of the experience and skill needed to run safely in the Encierro. Local people, as well as visitors from certain areas of Spain have had more opportunity to practice in other encierros, bull and cow fests, which used to be held in a wider space than in the historic center of Pamplona.

Stray bulls become extremely agitated (they are herd animals who do not like to be separated from the pack), and so the organisers arrange for a “second wave” of calmer and older steers to run through the streets after the “first wave,” in order to collect any stragglers. The shops and residences along the course are boarded up to prevent damage by either bull or human during the race. One particular stretch of the course, called Mercaderes, is particularly notorious for injuries: on rainy days the bulls cannot turn well on the cobblestones, and often collide into the wall; tear marks from the sharpened horns against the pulp wood barriers give an indication as to the events of days before. While locals are always keen to avoid this corner, it is not uncommon to see tourists getting trampled and seriously injured there.

The course concludes at Pamplona’s Plaza de Toros, and the bulls are herded inside the Corralillos to participate in the afternoon’s Corrida.

The participants of the Encierro are left in the stadium, and smaller bulls (with wrapped horns) are released into the arena and toss the participants, to the general amusement of the crowd. Once all of the bulls have entered the stadium, a third rocket is released while a fourth firecracker indicates that the bulls are in their bullpens and the run has concluded.

See also: Plaza de Toros Monumental de Pamplona

(source .. wikipedia) reproduced under GFDL

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San Fermín wikipedia entry
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