“The world was not wheeling anymore. It was just very clear and bright and inclined to blur at the edges.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Pamplona
Sometimes it takes so little (or so much a man could argue) and the thing explodes. Like San Fermin festival. It took one book Mr. Hemingway wrote and the event became an international festivity. A place where modern tourists come to savor the real taste and scent and looks of Spanish extravaganza.
Pretty women, smell of piss, amazing tapas, white cloth covered in red whine and six brutal deaths in a row… Arena. Party. Bulls. Á lá Balmain type matadors … All so colorful, hectic and full. So diverse that it doesn’t make sense anymore. Overwhelming, and then you feel like you can’t feel anymore. Is that how I felt about San Fermin? Oh yes. But there was much more than that. Some sort of sudden clearance of my mind and understanding that I should actually wake up.
San Fermin. Ya know. The big thing with the bulls running through the town of Pamplona. Occasionally, killing one or two people… Around 6 bulls a day in total for seven days in a row. Not animal friendly. But when you give it a bit more thought.. better that than being an American farm cow?
Wikipedia does it better than I do: “The festival of San Fermín is a week-long, historically rooted celebration held annually in the city of Pamplona (in Navarre, Spain). <…> While its most famous event is the encierro, or the running of the bulls, which happens at 8:00 AM from the 7th of July to the 14th July, the festival involves many other traditional and folkloric events <…>. It has become probably the most internationally renowned fiesta in Spain. Over 1,000,000 people come to participate in this festival.”
Did I mention a little stop in Barcelona?
Never finished but scary beautiful. Sagrada Família
