PETA in Pamplona. More photos in www.sanfermin.tv

Pictures of today's bull running here: www.sanfermin.tv

In order to minimize the risks for the runners participating in the run, there are some rules that both runners and spectators must follow.
  
   
 
 

  It is strictly forbidden:

1. To be under 18 years old.

2. Not to obey the human barriers created by the security forces.

3. To block any part of the run indicated by the officials.

4. To stay in the run in corners, entryways to buildings and any other gap without the intention of running.

5. To have any entry to a building open, being the owners responsible to block the entry.

6. To be under the influence of alcohol, drug or incapacitated for running.

7. To carry any object that could put in danger any runner.

8. To lack of the proper attire to run

9. To call the attention of the bulls.

10. To stop in the run, stay to long in the fences or do anything that would difficult the run of the rest of the runners.
 

THE ARE SEVERAL STREETS: SANTO DOMINGO, PLAZA DEL AYUNTAMIENTO, MERCADERES, AND ESTAFETA MAINLY. 

 
Santo Domingo Street
This is the fasted part of the run, the herd just started the run and the uphill favors the biomechanics of the run of the bulls, which have the front legs shorter than the back ones.
It is also a very complicated section due to the fact that there are virtually no escape possible to abandon the run due to the narrowness and lack of fencing. The runners moving to the sides get crowded and any head movement by the bulls could result in a gored runner.

The length of the section is 280 meters.

Plaza del Ayuntamiento to Mercaderes street
This is one of the least complicated sections playing with the meaning of the word complication.

The street is wider and there are two wide turns which allow the runners to run and move away from the herd.

This section is no longer than 100 meters.

The turn of Estafeta Street
Probably this is one of the most spectacular and dangerous places of the run. It is a blind corner of almost 90 degrees where is not unusual to see bulls and runners crushing against the fences. The herd many times is split apart as a consequence of the collisions.

Any runner runs and take the turn in the left part has the risk of crashing with the bulls against the fences.

Runners breaking the rules who are waiting in the short part of the turn can create unnecessary risks due to that the bulls as they are quickly getting up the first thing they see are these runners staying still.

Estafeta Street
This is the longest and most populated section of the run. The bulls are getting tired and run slower, which makes easier for the runners to be closer to them for longer time. On the other hand many times the herd has split in several groups which gives some runners to run once more.
The length of this section is 300 meters.

Telefónica
This is the last part of the run before entering the bullring, and the ground changes to asphalt which increases the risk of bulls falling because of the reduced adherence.

The length of the section is around 80 meters.

Callejón
This is the tunnel leading to the bullring and the most dangeous section of the run. The bulls are tired and because of the volume of runners at this point and lower speeds they get easily distracted. This sections is the narowest fo the whole run creating some falls and confusion. It has been in this section where 8 of the 13 casualties have taked place.

The lenght of the section is less than 30 meters.

The Bull Running is the most popular act of the fiesta of San Fermin and the motive for many foreigners who arrive to Pamplona on the 6th of July. Basically, it consists of running in front of the bulls for a short distant through the narrow streets of the old part of the city from the corrals of Santo Domingo to the Plaza de Toros where, in the afternoon they will be killed in the bullring.

 A total of 6 bulls run along with two groups of oxen for a distance of 825 meters.

The dangerous journey which is celebrated every morning from the 7th to the 14th of July begins at 8 am although those who wish to run must enter before 7:30.

A few minutes before it begins, the runners plead to San Fermin and sing the song of the saint three times before a statuette of the saint adorned with the red kerchief of the peñas in the Cuesta de Santo Domingo.

The song goes like this: "A San Fermín pedimos, por ser nuestro patrón, nos guíe en el encierro dándonos su bendición". “To San Fermin we ask, you are our patron saint, guide us in the running and give us your benediction.

At eight sharp a rocket is launched which announces the opening of the corrals of Santo Domingo. Afterward, a second rocket is launched which indicates that the bulls have left the corral. The route that the bulls take is the following: climb the hill of Santo Domingo and cross the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (city hall) after which they file into calle Mercaderes.

A closed curve gives entrance to Estafeta street, the longest stretch of the run which then gives way to a piece of calle Duque de Ahumada, also known as the piece of Telefonica, and into the entrance to the Plaza de Toros.

When the bulls reach the bullring a third rocket is lauchend. Once the bulls are enclosed a forth rocket indicate that the Bull Running has concluded.

The running last an average of three minutes, but it is normal to take many minutes more especially if the heard has split during the run. Although all the sections are dangerous for obvious reasons, the turn in Mercaderes street and the stretch between Estafeta Street and the bullring are the most dangerous of all of them.

 In the last years, the crowding of the runners is causing a major problem increasing the risk and making very difficult and dangerous to run in front of the bulls for more than 50 mts.

All the sections of the run are supervised by security and medical care personnel. Despite of this between the years 1924 and 1997, 14 runners have died and more than 200 have been gored.

This is the best know aspect of the fiesta and that which has made Sanfermines (fiesta of San Fermin) popular around the world.

 It is a melting pot, which through its fame has converted into an overwhelming ordeal for those who like to participate directly.

The history is very simple: long ago, when the shepherds would bring the bulls from the countryside to Pamplona they would spend the night close to the city and on the day of the bullfights, before dawn, enter running under vigilance of people on horseback and on foot helping with sticks and yelling to enclose the bulls.

With the passing of time, which knows when, people began to run behind and eventually in front. And this, which began as an aid to the shepherds, has turned into a peculiar custom which has come to define San Fermin: el encierro (or the enclosing).

In the beginning, the first section of the run La Cuesta de Santo Domingo (the hill of Santo Domingo street) was reserved for butchers and the number of runners never was that great.

If the folk festival is the prologue to the fiesta, then the display of rural sports (which also takes okace in the Plaza de los Fueros) is the epilogue usually at midday on the 14th.

The hard work of the woodcutters is reflected in the atractive spectacle of the aizkolaris struggling to finish the job (cutting a trunk) first. The stone workers, extracting stone or building churches or houses, show their skills in the surprising strenght of the arrijasotzailes (stine-lifters), capable if lifting the world if necessary.

 These are sports with close links to the land, the reflection of a ruralsociety with is diferent rhythm of life.

 After a few intense days of emotions, risks and adventure in the Fiesta, these slower country rhytms are much appreciated.

At eleven o'clock in the morning on the 14th -seven days after the festival of San Fermín- the religious celebration of the Octava (Octave, or Eight Mass) is held in the chapel of the Patron Saint, in which the cathedral choir also participites.

The City Council also attends, having left the City Hall a quarter of an hour earlier, in all their finery andwith the ssociated pageantry of the fiesta.

After the service they return once more to the Casa Consistorial - the City Hall- where the Giants performa few dances in the square in official farewell to the fiestas(although their true farewell for the masses takes place in magic scenario in the Bus Station, where every day at two o'clockin the afternoon, giants and big-heads retire to rest after their morning procession through the streets and squaresof the city centre, where they have enjoyedthe warmth of the hapiness of children and not so young alike).

 As could hardly be otherwise, The Pamplonesa, the City band also takes part in the procession.

For those who seek more peaceful moments, either owing to theircharacter or their age, the programme of the Fiesta also offers some specials things.

The morning concerts in the Taconera gardens, for example, with joteros (Navarrese folkssingers) and txistularis (Basque flute players), or alternatively the most select concert of them all, the one given by the internationally-known Chamber Point of Pamplona in the Gayarre Theatre.

On the Sunday of the Fiesta there is the multitudinous txistulari concert (also in the Taconera) after they have performed in the City Hall square.

 
From the moment that the festival enters its final stages, hearts and minds of all who have lived the Sanfermines with intensivity bury themselves in the consolation which lasts too long - 356 days- with the cry of "Not so long to go"

And when the New year arrives groups of friends will celebrated togeher, singing the countdown to the Fiesta of Pamplona: "First of January, second of February, Third of March, fourthof April, fifth of May, sixth of June, seventh of JulySan Fermín!!"

These are good times and even better excuses to get together nostalgically, and even more in the sure hope that "there's not so long to go to the glorious San Fermín". But in the dying hours of the fiestas, which are savoured second by second with understandable miserliness, voices sing out, with the same joy with which they have lived the fiestas to full, "pobre de mí, pobre de mí, que se han acabado las fiestas de San Fermin" ('Poor me, poor me, the Festivities of San Fermin, have finished').

And they draw their tired legs up to jump with more force in an end to the fiesta which never really finishes.

 Then a simple match is enoughto fill the streets with flickering lights which follow the primitive rhythm of the drum. What a happy sorrow we find in the ""pobre de mi""! Bodies which - and it is true- can't take any more, but no body gives in and everyone participates, giving themselves fully to the dying final moments of the Sanfermines.

 But the party is not over. In the heart of everyone it is embedded and will wait impatiently for the fleting flight of the first rocket the next year's fiestas.

Almost as symbolic as The bull runs . allthough for many, above all outsiders, they continue to be the great unknown of the festival.

Having already been in existence for nearly a century and a half, the current giants are the successors of others which maginified the most marked pageantry of the city for hundreds of years. The Giants - the procession ofGiants and Bi-heads, kilikis and Zaldikos- mark the experience of the Sanfermines of the people of Pamplona from their childhood.

Without them the Sanfermines would loseand essential part of their character. Some People may think that they are merely an entertainment for children, but those who think that will never understand the soulof the fiesta and the people who live it.

The child as he becomes an adolescent and then a young person, may forget the Procession.

But when a few years on, he becomes more mature he returns, maybe motivated by nostalgia for his childhood. Giants and Big-Heads, Kilikis and Zaldikos, are in their own right a fundamental part of the fiesta in its deepest significance.

And when the calendar signals inevitable end of the Sanfermines of a particular year, the saddest farewll is not the one which begins with the dismantling of the barriers of the bull run and ends with the candles -the burles- que and surrealist pantomime of pobre de mi-, but rather the farewell to the giants at lunchtime on the 14th from the platforms of the bus station.

The main purpose was, and still is, to wake up the sleeping populace and annunce a new dat of festivities.

At 6 in the morning the various bands of pipers hired by the Corporation gather at the doors of the Ciry Hall and spread out through the city, taking the shrill sound of the pipes to every corner of the old town.

At the same timeand in the same place the members of the municipal band and a group of loyal followers meet to seet out on a long trail which starts before dawn and ends soon afters daybreak with their return to play outside the door of the City Hall, where things are alreadybeginning to stir in preparation for the coming bull run

The fireworks are that encounter with fantasy hidden in a paper cone.

The sky lights up with fleeting colours which dissolve in the ardent darkness of the night.

More and more people watch them every night, enjoyingthe rhythm, colour and even (on special days) the music through giant loudspeakers which accompanies these peaceful explosions in the sky but which frighten the little ones, hiding in their parents' arms.

The funfair fills these littleones' hearts with joy. The Big Wheel, the merry-go-round, the shooting gallery...and, above all, the circus which dazzzles the childrens' gaze with itsbrightness.

These are the festivities bathed in light, sound and colour.

It may not be a devotion of every day of the year but there is no doubt that San Fermín is raised every year, in the second week of July, with a religious protagonism that puts other members of the celestial court into second place.

 It is not in vain that the saint is called upon before every bull run, as his protecting cape is faith-fully hoped for in dangerous trips and falls of the run and he is continuously prayed to in his baroque chapel in the church of San Lorenzo, who has to give up his place of honour for a few days.

But when San Fermín really becomes the protagonist of the street - which, lest we forget, is where the festivities really take place- when he is carried in procession through the streets of the old town on the morning of the seventh, accompanied by the authorities, the various guilds and companies of the city, giants and big-heades carnival figures, the city band and the ordinary people immaculate in their best festival dress - white shirt, white skirt or trousers, a red sash around the waist, red neck-scarf and canvas sandals, also with red ribbons.

 All this pomp and sho to accompany him on his way through the streets of the old medieval districts. And, on several occasions the solemnity of the procession is interrupted - with calculated spontaneity - by the sharp echo of a jota, the moving local folk song, which breaks the clean morning air and puts the emotional hearts of the listeners to the test.

Tradition has it that Honesto was sent by San Saturnino to evangelize Roman Pamplona, seccesfully converting the Senator Firmo and all his family to the Christian faith. His son Fermín was named bishop at a very young age and in turn evangelized Gaul until he was imprisoned in Ameins and beheaded on the twenty-fifth of September.

It is not Known ho long San Fermín has been the main Patron Saint of the Kingdom of Navarra and of the diocese of Pamplona.

The celebrations in his honour used to take place on the tenth of October when his arrival in Ameins was commemorated, but as early as 1591 the celebration wass transferred to the seventh of July, a much more suitable time for the festival than unpredictable Autumn. The image carried through the streets of the three old districts which made up medival Pamplona, Navarrería, the borough of San Cernin, and the village of San Nicolás, is a silver plated wooden sculptured from the end of the XVth century with a locket, also in silver, open in the chest.