La Fiesta de San Fermin; El Encierro

JULY 6th
PAMPLONA


LA FIESTA


I arrived in Pamplona on the evening of the sixth, having spent that entire day traveling from Santiago de Compostela -- far in Spain's northeast. The train along the final stretch, from Vitoria to Pamplona, was already filled with only party-goers -- most my age -- already decked out in the all-white garb with red scarf traditional to the Fiesta de San Fermin. Everyone was already drinking, passing around big plastic bottles of red wine mixed with coke (Kalimocho, the regional students' drink of choice) and sharing chunks of fresh baguette. Someone started smoking a joint, and the conducter passed through shouting "para que la matiz quede clarita, no fumar incluye los porros, cono!* " half-outraged, half-laughing at the sheer audacity of it.

[*excuse my inability to make any sort of Spanish orthographic marks; I'm on an arab keyboard]

For a moment I feel painfully out of place: dressed all wrong, the only one alone, the only one lugging around a sizeable pack. I thought this was doomed to be a depressive disaster, and that the outsider role so familiar to me would be flung in my face as contrast to eveything which even now I could not be a part of.

But once in Pamplona, the festivities got to the better of me. Only at 7 or 8 PM, many were already drunk, and the streets were spilling over with partying Spaniards. I decided I was determined to have a good time, whether I spent the whole night myself or not.

As it turns out, meeting people didn't take long in San Fermin. Two girls from California (who later confided that they had followed me only for the rather capricious reason that I had a backpack) struck up a conversation with me as I was stowing in luggage storage my principal belongings, and transferring to a school pack only what I needed to not freeze at night and to stay marginally hygienic. Soon we had snowballed with a four-strong entourage of Floridian guys, and we let commence our maurading.

Our vital step one was to find the nearest chinaman's shop, which was a swarming madhouse of consumption. Beers were not cooled five minutes in the overworked refrigerators before a crowd flooded in demanding to drink them now. Our beverages were bought and taken to the streets with us grinning at our successes. Though we had fermented the brews our ownselves. I stuck with kalimocho, in memory of my last spanish blow-out (because Lord knows I hadn't had my fare share yet in this country).

I bought a liter of coke, poured three-fourths out and refilled it with a bottle of wine. I took a sip. It was warm, tannic, and slightly disagreeable. By which I mean delicious.

Our party maneuvered along the twisted cobblestoned vias away from the outskirts of the old town, towards the ayuntamiento and Plaza del Castillo. The streets were swarming with the masses of people. Bars were breathing out drunkards waving their arms in directionless joy, and clutching pals desperately around their shoulders. A busy corner would present a wall of amorphous white, with red splashes swimming and bobbing through chaotically.

And why all the white? There is actually sound logic for this one. I was, right about this time, only mildly surprised to learn that the gallons of wine being passed around in liter cups or unlabelled glass bottles or leather bladders on shoulder straps was only half used for drinking. It's other use, naturally, was for pouring on people around you.

There are many reasons why you might find cause to pour wine on someone. If this person displeased you, for example. Or, if he pleased you. Or, if he made you happy, sad, angry, giddy, violent, rambunctious, catatonic, horizontal, or vertical. These would all be valid inspirations to toss, squirt, or splatter wine in retaliation. A manner of expressing your emotion, as it were.

The white fits in because, clearly, the wine stains showed up better. This provided a direct measure of someone's drunkenness level: the quantity and variation of stains on his shirt. Instant fun-barometer! This was the principal instrument used in deciding who to talk to: pick someone with a similar stain-level to your own -- or they might not make sense.

But hold your judgement, because with all this red and white, the guy you thought was a drooling invalid today might seem more jolly than Kris Kringle on an ether binge once you've nursed the teets of a few more wine bags.

The debauchery this night (the first of the festival proper) simply continued without cease nor reason, only ceaseless motion. A destination was never even suggested. We went caterwauling in loose acquaintance, wine raised high but voices higher. A passed bar suddenly began pumping "Gangster's Paradise --" the raison d'etre of that mythical virtuoso, Coolio; and we took this as reason -- nay impetus -- to storm the bar en American masse, hollering in voices already hoarse, waxing lyrical on the pain we felt at being so gangster.

When this led into abusive 80's techno, we skedaddled. We must have been displeased with our carriage on street level, because I seem to remember people being carried on shoulders, and then a dog-pile. (A dog-pile is an example of a very, very good reason to pour wine on people.) And somewhere in this world exists a picture of me, with my ass stuck firmly in the ripped-up frame of a rusty chair, held up by two complete strangers, being marched through the streets of Pamplona fist-pumping and screaming "SAN FERMINES SAN FERMINES!" until hoarse.

I also recall talking to a native Pamplonan in a bar. (By this point in the night, the wine was to my head -- uh, to my bloodstream -- enough that the usual question I got during greetings, "Eres de Espana, no?" with me insisting that I wasn't, had transformed into "No eres de Espana," with me impassionately declaring that indeed I was.) When I asked him if he was running the next morning he just laughed at me. "Que va, tio. Es para los tontos." This, I would find, was the general feeling of Pamplonans, but not necessarily Spaniards in general.

At any rate, with the night well progressed and fear of the morning upcoming already in our minds, we headed to the park to bed down. There I confronted what otherwise could have only been a scene from a massive disaster-relief effort. The grass of the park, with it's hillocks and sparse thicketry of squat Spanish trees, was completely sheeted in two things: trash, and people. The trash was mostly white plastic bags, empty 2-liter bottles of Fanta or Coke, and 40's of beer. The people, forgive me for saying, were mostly debauched lunatics.

I shan't exclude myself from this category.

As the aspiring boy scouts I was with struggled desperately with a Target tent, I carried out what would become a ritual for the next three nights: I unrolled my bivy sack and lined it with my sleep sheet, set my shoes and waterbottle by the head, threw my backpack inside as a pillow and climbed in.


THE RUN


I awoke to the shoutings of madmen and the robust pleating of brass bands. Trumpets? at this hour? Trombones? Hell, what hour is it anyway? I drug my small clock out of my pocket. Six A.M., God help us. Or Saint Fermin, at the very least. I couldn't have slept more than four hours.

And that's when the great idea struck me: I know, I should go put my life in danger by running in front of gigantesque horned bovines! Good idea, Isaiah! UP! UP! UP!

I guess this was the predicted effect of the brass bands. I had actually not planned to run until my birthday, which was two days hence (arbitrary, yes, insymbolic, no), but I just couldn't let everyone run today without my participating. And I mean, there were baritones, people! How do you say no to a baritone's command at six in the morning?

So, I rushed to meet my vanished party companions at the hilltop of the city center, from where we convened on the entryway to the course.

The air was tense. As we were bustled and jostled into the gated streetway, the bodies about us smelled of slicking sweat and the acrid stinch of evaporating booze. Some were coiled -- teeth clenched and eyes awake with anxiety. Others wandered bleary-eyed, tripping over cobblestones and grabbing with clammy hands on wine-soaked backs and moistened forearms for support. Those still blatantly drunk from that night -- most having not slept at all -- were removed by the police; flashlights trained on eyes, pupils failing to dilate.

Those that passed the cursory screening were herded all into the plaza in front of city hall. The building lorded above us, its gold-gilded green sashes awkwardly festive above our pensively shuffling feet, rapid glances at the tower clock, and nervous exchanges. Most statements were meant to be humorous, but the laughter each time clapped short in unexpected counterpoint.

No one tried saying he wasn't afraid. In fact, I can't recall a single declaration of bravado. Most of us had no idea how the affair would follow throught. Those that had been researching the event for weeks gave impromptu orations, voices slightly timbrous before a rapt or simply silent audience.

We were not to get trapped in a doorway, we were not to be on an outside corner at passage, we were not to run the initial uphill stretch, we were definitely not to run deadman's corner (where, popular opinion held, the ESPN crew was stationed), and above all -- if we fell, we were not under any circumstances to attempt to get back up.

A radio announcement came on over scratchy megaphones and began to recite in several languages our instructions. In a cheery british accent the English version was carried:

"Runners should remember that it is impossible to run the entire course. Runers should choose a fifty-meter segment to run beforehand. You may not run when under the influence of any substance; you will be a danger to yourself and other runners. Do not punch or kick other runners. If you fall down --" and here the radio voice increased in volume to a sort of James Bond gravity -- "do not attempt to stand up. Stay on the ground and cover your head until the clattering of hooves has passed."

The falling bit bothered me; I thought that if I fell, I might not be able to restrain my instinct to stand. Oh, well, I just won't fall, I thought.

Minutes were interminable. We had been here since just after 6:30 AM and the run did not begin until 8:00. Conversation mostly centered on how the bloody hell we would be able to run anywhere with all these people. Minutes did not pass. Popular opinion was that they'd spread out minutes before the run, and then that most would bolt before the bulls even made their terrific debut. The clock hovered motionless. I hoped so. Its hands stalled. If not, I thought, this would simply be a massacre. Still, this time.

A roar went up.

What had happened.

Ah, there -- on an overlooking balcony -- the only thing nearly as exciting to the postpubescent hordes around me as near-death: boobies. It seemed a girl had taken her shirt off. "Cinco minutos de fama" the nationally-syndicated newspapers would title her unedited photograph the next day. The crowd roared with pleasure.

"Huzzah!"

She put her shirt back on.

"Boo!"

Another girl came into view.

"Huzzah!"

Hope springs eternal.

"Boo!" As this girl goes inside shaking her index finger no.

I can't help but laugh at the fickleness of this charade. I rather felt myself that everyone who had not seen a pair of breasts before ought to be focusing on the balconies, and that those who had never met hooved death on a spanish alleyway should be focused on our impending march with fate, but at least the mammary miniseries had taken our mind off the clock for a short while.

"BAM." A rocket goes off. That's the release.

The crowd, thinner now, is jolted into animation. A certain nauseating electricity flies through taut bellies and across wild-eyed faces. Nostrils are flared and heads go gyrating wildly from back to front. To see danger behind, to elect path ahead.

The first fear touches me. Not of imminent danger, but of confusion. At he first rocket, most of the crowd begins running full-tilt directly at me (facing behind). But I can see nothing. A solid wall of racing and fear-gripped boys -- eyes bloodshot and entirely in white. Their temorous flight meaningless to me. All I see is their fear and nothing of cause.

As the mass nears me, it transforms into tripping, flailing bodies. Without discrimination they shove and clamor. I face them and stand my ground, fists raised in boxer-stance. Seems absurd but seemed to work. Others do much the same thing (face the rushing crowd), and the road is suddenly cleared to reveal -- only more runners.

I glance around and realize that this first wave was just the deeply, madly frightened. Many of them are already leaping over the barriers and scrapping amongst themselves desperate for exit -- yet not a bull is in sight.

I, like the others on the course, turn and begin to jog slowly up the road that I might have some initial velocity.

When erupt the furious bulls. A schism now rips terrified faces from pumping bodies thrown and throwing from side to awning. Those same faces aghast from shock and imminence flattening themselves against sidestationed walls and woodgates as the horns by whipping threat rend their passage.

Face-front, Isaiah, now here with the bulls just at my side must I pacequicken. Thunderous and incongruous concussives are their hoofbeats at once cloglike and sudden. Their bells clank irreligious like a call to war. And they are gone.

I drop my stride back to a jog.

What? That was it. I hadn't even the time to produce fear.

I drift to the center of the road again, not quite sure what to do. Uncertain of the prescriptive. When bells burst from behind me feverish and stacatto. I barely have time to glance back and I am awash in the second fear at the sight of two more bulls not five feet at my rear.

"Oh, fuck," I say, in what certainly must have sounded a totally inappropriate neutrality.

Just darting to the side (probably in way less danger than I felt) I allow the bulls again in an instant to beat past.

But now I'm totally uncertain as to the duration of this course and the number of infuriated bovines snorting along it, so I keep my steady run along. It feels like perhaps a kilometer passes beneath my sneakers, when sudenly the street narrows between two corral fences which lead constrictively into the mouth of the bullring. Here a gate has been closed on us but I, like others, hop it. The police are beating some back with sticks and blows but I slip past.

And burst into the sands of the arena. The sun glints off the goldtinted earth, whitelike bodies readied at action or crouched behind short red barriers. The stands rise up in full circle around me, romanesque and crammed with shouting, riotous tribesmen in spectacle of blood and rear. They are roaring, cheering as if transfixed upon me but upon us their willing heros and victims.

La gente quiere violencia, I think, and as I slip into the ignominy of the thousands now trapped on the soil of the arena, I don't even see the final bull come snarling in -- its herders beating it forward through the parted sea of pretensions to enter and be shut into the cavernous darkgate behind a steel barrier.


LA SUELTA DE LAS VAQUILLAS


Once the running bulls had all safely passed, the participants began milling nonchalantly about the arena. A sort of muted bar-scene machismo dominated. I personally didn't really know what was to happen next. In fact, I was actually looking for a way out of the ring -- but momentarily I realized that we were shut in. Either the crowd or the police pushed back any would-be deserters.

And then a bull was in the arena. A crescendo shout erupted in the stands, and the white-suited flung outwards in diaspora.

I backed up against the wall and watched as the runners sprinted now leftwards now rightwards across the sands. I could not see the bull for the wall of people, but I envisioned it as such: as seen from above, a ring forged in the center of the seething mass of cotton and sweat, shifting morphically its center in time with the heaving, grunting bullform. He stops and the circle stops. He rotates, head weaving, jerking spasmically -- following the steady churning interpolation of bodies. His hoof strikes the earth and rakes in towards his body in a dust-rising scratching. The circle revolves around him gyroscopically, independent. He sights a patch of red; movement; life; the threat isolated. He charges. Chaos breaks loose.

A teardrop rupture in the side of the circle with these mad now running towards me. I move easily along the side of the arena walls, and the bull stops again somewhere in the center. The circle forms around him again, and again my sight is impeded.

This continues. I don't quite understand the system. Everyone seems to run up to see the bull, and then upon its charge to turn tail and run hysterically away -- blind to the danger. They trip and shove, leap over walls; occasionally I even see someone blindside an unsuspecting person with a fist to the face, or an elbow to the skull.

I don't understand this -- this reaction to the fear. Punching for no reason? Perhaps they are taking advantage of the disorder to take cheap shots at people, but that doesn't make any more sense than its being a reaction borne of fear. I know that when I am in this situation I get very calm, very quiet, and watch what's going on around me. In the bullring I stand steady with my fists raised ready to defend myself against anyone whose hysterics should put me in danger.

In fact, though the surprise of the free bull really shocked me with its raw exposure of oneself to the whims and capabilities of what appeared to be a dangerously rampaging animal, it is in this moment that I realized that the real danger in this whole event was not the animals at all; it was stupidity.

The problem is, as smart as you may be you must also deal with the stupidity of others.

And here in the arena, that was my real concern. Because it turns out that the calf released can well-nigh do his worst without any harm befalling you. He was flipping people, mock-goring them (his horns were cut flat at the tips) and trampling them left and right, but the casualties were arising unscathed -- or with a skinned elbow, a trickle of blood from the head.

With this found out, I caught on to the true fun of the event, which was to tease the calf as much as possible without molesting it. So I ran around, taunting it, tempting its charge, sidestepping it, and slapping it on the ass. Some vaulted over it. Others caught the horns and went down, but usually got right back up.

(I should mention here that some people -- mostly Americans -- did not play by the rules. They would go up and grab the calf, get all their friends and dogpile it, etc. This was met with loud boos from the crowd, and the most blatant perpetrators were either taken out by the police, or dragged out of the ring and beaten by vigilantes.)

So there we were, playing with the bull and easily evading its charges. I just kept the bull's location in my sights, and didn't feel much to worry about. Then a third fear came. Shouts carried to me as whispers were suddenly passed through the crowd.

"A second bull."

"Another bull."

"Two bulls."

Two bulls? Where. Adrenaline surged through me. My only thought to back against the wall, where I could not be struck from behind. Backing up, head from side to side. Then I sight it --

Oh my God. It's a real bull. Not a calf. What has happened. He got loose.

But it's a false alarm. This bull is used up to round up the other bull, and has a trainer behind him who corrals the two back into the gate.

Minutes pass and another calf is released. He is played with for some ten minutes and then is corraled. This game continues on and on.

Eventually I tire of it. The excitement has faded to wearisome, and I find a place where the bored participants are jumping into the stands and working their way outside. I follow.

Now comes the wine.


EPILOGUE


It is customary to publish widely the injury counts and gory details of each day's run on the morning following.

My run -- the first -- turned out to be one of the worst.

Although I can not find the actual news reports, because I'm presently in the Western Sahara (not exactly a technologial stronghold; see next blog entry), but I remember that one man from New Zealand was gored in the leg at the initial part of the course, and that there were several other lighter injuries. Unfortunately however, a man from Connecticut was rendered parapalegic during La Suelta de las Vaquillas. Last I read he was undergoing reconstructive surgery to two vertebrae and was in very poor condition.

That this happened in the bullring (I have no idea how) -- where, as you can read above, I thought I was in far less danger than the run -- inspired me not to run on my birthday again.

Once was enough.

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