Bullish on Pamplona, Spain

By Charles Leocha

Travel columnist

updated 3:01 p.m. ET July 11, 2005

Sometimes travelers wander into cities by accident. But I know exactly why I came to Pamplona that first year. I came to run the bulls.

I drove for two days to see if the fiesta was as wild as James Michener made it sound in his chapter set in Pamplona during San Fermin in “The Drifters.”

The Running of the Bulls, as we Americans know it, or Fiesta de San Fermin, as it is known throughout Spain, lived up to every description and much more — more than I could even imagine. This town, at the foothills of the Pyrenees, for eight or ten days in July (depending on how you counted … and how long you lasted) became the center of the let-it-all-hang-out, free-love lifestyle of the 60s and 70s.

Every day we lived life to its fullest. Rough red country wine alternating with champagne passed from reveler to reveler in bottles and botas. Streets and plazas were packed shoulder-to-shoulder with nonstop dancers swaying behind peña bands at every hour in darkness or in the harsh light of day.

In bars, eyes would meet across the room; lips formed words impossible to hear over the din but clearly understood; and one-time strangers found themselves arm in arm embracing momentary best friends and possibly, new lovers.

Every morning we faced death. We gathered in the narrow streets and waited to sprint in front of six half-ton fighting bulls and seven steers barreling up the cobblestones at 8 o’clock on their way to the arena and their destiny.

On my first morning in the streets, I didn’t even know what direction the bulls would come from. I quickly figured it out. Diving down to the sidewalk and only getting up when a Spaniard tapped me on the shoulder, I never felt so good for having been missed.

Pamplona was a perfect balance of unvarnished life and possible death. Lifetimes were lived in hours. Inhibitions fell to the wayside. Smiling was the only way of life. For my days there, this was life in another world.

But that was 26 years ago. That was in the days of bellbottoms. That was immediate post-Vietnam. That was post-pill, but pre-AIDS. That was under the rule of Franco.

The biggest surprise is that today, Pamplona during San Fermin is still much the same. Amazing but true, the essence of the fiesta hasn’t changed. The Pamplona of Hemingway in the 30s and that of Michner in the 60s and the fiesta that we find in the early 2000s are still the ultimate celebration of life.

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