Red, liquid glory,
Spurting out from all around
Stain the ground brighter.
San Fermín! The official beginning of this festival was today at 12 noon, and it was heralded by the chupinazo, a firework bang set off from the town hall.
So, first, a few things about San Fermín. San Fermín is the patron saint of Pamplona, and they are rather fond of him. He was supposedly dragged to death behind some bulls, which is part of the reason that the famed Running of the Bulls (called the Encierro in Spanish) and the bullfights are a part of the festival in his honour. The festival lasts from the 6th to the 14th of July each year, and there is an Encierro each morning from the 7th to the 14th. Each evening, there are bullfights. Everyone wears white and red. Everyone. The traditional uniform is a white shirt and white pants with a red bandanna and red sash, but some people do it differently.
This wardrobe choice makes the day of the Chupinazo extra fun! After the explosion, everyone in the Plaza del Castillo (the main square in the old town) unleashes boxes and jugs and bottles of sangría, containers of mustard and ketchup, bags of flour, and any other solid-or-liquid-messy-thing they can think of onto their friends' outfits. After a few days, you may be able to imagine that the sea of bright red and pristine white tends to become somewhat... well, the colours mix a little, you know.
After we were thoroughly stained and covered in sticky sangría-and-who-knows-what-else mess, we headed out to see what sorts of events were happening for the festival. A handy programme informed us that there was a concert at 13h... well, we missed that. The next event wasn't until 5, so we decided to take a nap (our campsite is full of riotous tourists who make noise well into the mornings) and eat some food in the Citadel park. We woke up to a rather amusing sound test emanating from the stage set up across the street, which sound test turned out to be better than the actual concert.
We strolled through the Bosquecillo (little forest) in Pamplona to see the market stalls and food vendors, as well as to listen to a really lovely orchestral concert. In Pamplona, we saw the building for their rather large music school during our wanderings, and we assume that this is where the people came from. They played a number of local pieces that got us into the rowdy spirit of the festival. :)
After that, it was starting to get late, but there was one more event that we desperately wanted to see: all it said in our programme was "Toro de Fuego" (Bull of Fire) with a location listed... so we went there. And, what do you know? There was a giant plaster of Paris bull mounted on a man's shoulders that was spraying fireworks and chasing people around the streets. We played with it for a while (the whole 'event' only lasted a few minutes), checked ourselves for burns, and headed home for the night. Big day!