Fiesta de San Fermín

Fiesta de San Fermín, annual Spanish bullfighting festival celebrated for nine days during July in Pamplona, in honour of St Fermín. According to local tradition, Fermín was the son of the Roman governor in the 3rd century AD. After converting to Christianity, he became Pamplona’s bishop before being martyred in 303. Today he is known as the patron saint of cobblers, winemakers, and bakers, and is a main focus of the fiesta, although the celebrations comprise a mixture of religious worship and secular activities.

The festival traditionally begins on July 6, when the mayor of Pamplona announces the start of celebrations outside the town hall. To honour St Fermín there is an evening church service, and also a procession on the following morning in which carnival figures and traditionally costumed local people carry an effigy of the saint to the cathedral, accompanied by musicians. Throughout the celebrations there are street parties, performances of folk music, and fireworks. However, perhaps the most famous event of the festivities is the daily encierro, or “Running of the Bulls”, in which six bulls are released from the corral, and charge through a closed-off city route (around 825 m/2,700 ft in length) to the arena where bullfights are held each evening. As soon as large rockets are set off as a signal, hundreds of participants (known as pamplonicas) run through the narrow streets in front of the animals. The encierro is a hazardous experience: as well as the threat of being gored by the bulls, runners are in danger of being trampled by each other, and it has become a habit for many pamplonicas to utter a brief prayer to St Fermín just before the run, asking him to safeguard them. Since records began in 1924 there have been 14 deaths, and injuries are common. The writer Ernest Hemingway, a keen spectator of the festivals, immortalized the first documented death in his works The Sun Also Rises (1926) and Death in the Afternoon (1932). The number of injuries, in addition to existing concerns about bullfighting, has caused protests, but as a long-standing and popular local tradition, the Fiesta de San Fermín seems likely to continue indefinitely.