Leading up to San Fermin, we seemed to meet tons of Spaniards.  All had the exact same advice for Danny after he told them he wanted to run with the bulls: “cuidado.”

Cuidado, caution, indeed.  We arrived in Pamplona on the first night of the nine night festivities.  With the first “encierro” or bull run the next morning, Danny decided he might as well try his luck on the first day and just get it over with.  Danny’s going to write about his experience with the encierro later this week, so for now I’ll just leave you in suspense.

Besides the famous encierro, which happens every single morning of the festival, San Fermin is also regarded as the biggest party in Europe.  Staring July 6th and ending July 14th, the festival is one easy math equation: sangria+bulls= craziness.  All night bands and bars do their best to keep nearly a million people happy and drunk over the nine days of the festival.  The median age seemed to be around 18 although there were lots of people our age and older, we felt slightly out of our element.  That’s not to say we didn’t enjoy the festivities, but we couldn’t hold a candle to the younger folks.

For the last five hundred years,  the encierro ends each morning in the bull ring, where the enormous bulls that have just run down the street are corralled and escorted from the ring as quickly as possible.  Left in the ring are hundreds, maybe even a thousand battered, frightened and exhilarated people who have survived the running of the bulls.  They are waiting for what can only be described as payback.   Now I’ve  never witnessed a gladiator competition, but if you’ve seen the movie you might have an idea of what if feels like to be in the ring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7tBikbsvqw

With the big bulls safely out of the picture several smaller bulls, with their horns covered to prevent goring, are released one at a time into the crowd.  The doors are closed and the same people who just ran for their lives down the street  try to attract the attention of the bull with colored shirts, newspapers and clapping.  Some people try to jump the bull or even torment it but the handful that literally try to grab the bull by the horns, are punished quite severely from the crowd of locals and beaten until they let the bull go.  Although participants can’t be gored by the bulls, the bulls are still quite strong and can knock people down, toss them into the air, charge them and even run them over.  On the day we sat in the bull ring two people were pulled out of the run for medical attention.  As you can imagine, people don’t tend to stay in the ring for too long and by the third bull the crowd had cleared considerably, with most of the “runners” relegating themselves to watching from atop the wall or behind a safety barrier.  Brutal.

The action is primitive and absolutely horrifying and yet, electrifying.  Cheering, jeering and wincing at the action, the crowd is just as much as part of the action as the bulls, probably even more so.  It’s like watching a sports game in a crowd of a few thousand people, a very frenzied crowd of people.

If you go: San Fermin runs every year from July 6th-July 14th, and nearly a million people are estimated to attend.  Book transportation and accommodation early.  The encierro happens every morning of the festival starting July 7th at 8am, but in order to participate or spectate you’ll have to be there much earlier.  Follow the rules of the encierro, which are posted all over town, and remember not to participate drunk or drugged.  Bulls that participate in the encierro in the morning are killed during a bull fight in the evening, tickets are available at the bullring in advance.