Heroes de San Fermin or "The Full Bull Moon"

(Pamplona, Spain, 1987, Festival de San Fermin, The Running of the Bulls)

The full moon coincided with the Running of the Bulls at Pamplona's Festival de San Fermin. I arrived there on July 6, 1987 for the opening festivities. The first day was disorienting with giant figures and Riau-Riau dancers making their way through large crowds of drunken revelers crowding the squares. What I remember of it is blurred by time and the adrenaline that kept me going through those mad days.

My friends and I stayed in the college dorms on the outside of town and each day made our way through thousands of people sleeping anywhere they could, most of them passed out rather than truly sleeping as the festival went non-stop twenty-four hours a day.

On the seventh hour of the seventh day of July, as tradition would have it, we made our way to a bar where it was reported that Hemingway drank each day before the running of the bulls. That morning's newspaper in hand, we had a drink to "calm our nerves" before the flare announcing the opening of the gates to the enclosure where that day's bulls were being held. Stationed at the Plaza del Ayuntamiento, we were about a third of the way into the course's half mile run. From there, we could see the swelling crowd and the bulls as they ran up the cobbled road's slight rise.

The night before, we'd gone to the holding pen to look at the bulls with which we would be running. Passive as they were in the pen, they looked powerful, and we looked at one another searching for some clue of reservation upon which we might build an argument, but each merely nodded his head and said, "Tomorrow."

The streets were crowded with people, but when the flare went up and the gates were opened, many tried jumping the barricades to get into the big crowds of observers lining the streets. We watched as the crowd thinned then parted and saw the horns of the bulls bouncing up and down, up and down as they made their stumbling run. And suddenly it occurred to me that i couldn't outrun a bull, certainly not for most of half a mile. What madness had led me to think so?

Then they were upon us and we did our best to stay in front and tap one on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. As we ran, people were falling to the street. You will read that they have slipped because the old streets are worn and slick with years of wear and with beer, but I will tell you that is not the case. More often legs would buckle from simple fear, knees just collapsing and wills departing, and you had to watch not only the bulls but those people in front of you who had become faint of heart.

We made it to the famous Curva de Mercaderes hacia Estafeta, that steep turning of the road where bulls most often lose their feet and then down the long straight stretch of the Calle to the Curva de Telefonica, that eighty or so degree turning into the Plaza de Toros. As we ran, though, the bulls made up ground and I found myself pinned against a wall as some of the bulls went by. Just as they were passing, I ran behind the pack and tapped a steer on the rump, as close as I would get to the heroic deed that day. Behind us was a second group of bulls, and so we ran up the street ahead of them, watching as they too made ground.

Just before we made the final turn, the last group of bulls passed us, but we kept running to get through the gates to the arena before the guards closed them. And barely, we did, squeezing between just before they were shut.

On the floor of the arena, we stood with where bullfighters stood and looked up into the crowd that the bullfighters would see that afternoon. Suddenly, though, everyone was forming up in front of the gates from which some undersized cows with taped horns would emerge to run among us for the amusement of the audience.

And then it was over and we were sitting in Plaza drinking champagne feeling ourselves heroes rather than silly bastards among the throng. We sat at the table where Hemingway sat in front of Montoya's hotel. It was early morning. We had tickets to the fights that afternoon. We would eat and drink and fill our botas at one of the local shops. At home, as fate would have it, our friends would see us run as we would show up in the the first videos ever shown of this event on ESPN.