Pamplona – The Real Story

Author - circled far right - running with the bulls in Pamplona (Miuras)

The train from Barcelona to Pamplona is old-fashioned for Spain and yet it still boasts a long bar complete with bar stools where I can sit with tapas and a beer as the arid hills and tall thin trees sweep by the windows. Catalan country makes way for the ancient kingdom of Navarre and its capital, the city of the running of the bulls.

The day before I was in a very different place, at the very heart of the British Army on Salisbury Plain, where I learnt a very different perspective on bullfighting. My day was with General Sir David Richards, Commander-in-Chief of the Land Forces of the United Kingdom (and soon to be Chief of the General Staff). Much of the day was spent driving prototype desert vehicles, testing the limits of the Challenger II tank, using their vast simulators to test my identify-and-kill skills on filmed sequences from insurgency areas and so on. All great ‘boys own adventure’ stuff, but infinitely more interesting were the informal one-on-one discussions with the General and his subordinates, including two Major Generals and a Lieuentant General, (along with a day’s worth of chatter with various lesser ranks including our aide-de-camp for the day, the tirelessly polite and enthusiastic Captain William Squires). My conclusions about the current role of the British Army in Afghanistan I have published elsewhere (to be found here), but what struck me with reference to my work here is the particular type of courage and the particular view of death with which these men are infused.

When I arrived in the office of one of the Major Generals, he apologised for the delay (an army delay – i.e. two minutes or less) but the office was running at unusual speed to deal with the fact that a record number of British servicemen had died earlier that day in Afghanistan. The main incident which killed five men at once involved a secondary attack with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). The Major General, whose role that day was really to explain the structure of Land Command to me, happily leaped up and explained with devastating clarity with a whiteboard and marker the threat his men faced and its infinite upgradeability (in answer to a media-led question as to whether better armour on personnel carriers was required, he remarked, “You could give me a main battle tank and in the end it would make no difference, because they would just use a larger charge. I need local intel and troops on the ground who can tell me where the damn things are placed, not to take an area for an hour with casualties on both sides, then retreat claiming victory and leaving the locals to the tender mercies of a vengeful Taliban. I need more soldiers.”)

However, what struck me most was the calm manner with which everyone – and I include the rank and file I met – dealt with the death of comrades and the risk of death to themselves. It contrasts a great deal with the way people talk about matadors, and sometimes the way matadors talk about themselves, even though none has died in the ring since 1986. However, another thing which comes across is the fact that bravery is not something much discussed in army training. The troops are so heavily conditioned by exercises and simulations that one has the impression that when a vehicle is fired upon, they are out of the vehicle in a defensive perimeter, calling in air-cover, and then on the offensive themselves, before consciousness has time to voice its thoughts (this is not to say that great courage does not exist, but that is what goes beyond the training.)

Of course, the matador does something very different. He must not only stand fast and use his training with the bull, but he must dance with it, linking a series of passes with the cape into a deliberately chosen faena, or display, which contains within its graces an exquisite and esoteric death. Art is the order of the day, not assassination, although it all too often stoops to mere butchery (and lack of bravery, lack of skill, and lack of taste are the reasons for this.) Sadly, the soldier´s conditioned response is predictable, and so it appears that when the first IED took out the vehicle, the troops deployed into a nice looking patch of ground – one with cover or some other advantage – and it contained a secondary explosive which finished them off.

Oddly enough, I spend quite some time explaining what I am doing to these men of action who seem to find it as interesting as I do their strange career choice. And it is as I am explaining it to them that I start to receive text messages asking if I am alright from concerned friends. It would appear that in a relatively unusual incident a young man – at first rumoured to be British – has died running the bulls in Pamplona that day. To say that I find this unnerving is to understate heroically.

When I finally arrive in Pamplona it is at in the height of what seems to be a Rio Carnival-style street party, although, strikingly, everyone is in the same uniform – white shirt, white trousers, red neckerchief and red sash.

I walk out the ground of the run. It is a half mile of streets with three corners, all of which are now packed with revellers. I try to see how I am going to deal with it, looking at the height of bars on the windows and the height of the heavy wooden barriers for the possibility of climbing or vaulting at speed. I see some likely spots, but I have no idea as yet how the crowds will be in the morning. I speak to my father and mother, neither of whom are willing to talk me out of it although they indicate they might prefer that, especially since Padilla has told me he won’t be running with me. The bravest of toreros has telephoned me on the train to say that an injury he received to his shoulder in France means that he won’t risk running in the morning when he has to fight in the evening.

I meet up with the American aficionado Robert Weldon – a young man of imposing height and knowledge about this taurine world – who has been running for the past four days. He takes me to a place on the slope of the Calle San Domingo he has run from each time and then tells me I can have it; he says he has no intention of running with the Miuras, the most dangerous and largest breed of fighting bull, on the Sunday of the Feria when numbers of people in the streets have doubled to over four thousand and many have been up since the night before in the bars.

I get home at about half past twelve – the run is at eight a.m. – but I do not sleep. Instead, I sit down and write out my last will and testament. Ridiculous I know, but that was how I was thinking. Not that it would be legally binding, but I’m sure my parents would follow it to the letter. The cash in the bank and my few shares to my surviving brother, my library of books – especially the science and philosophy – to be offered to my old College, everything else to be offered to my friends as keepsakes, my love to all, especially my girlfriend. I save it as a draft on the website of my blog and leave the password to a trusted, internet-savvy friend in an envelope marked in case of emergency on the desk of the hotel room. I name my friend the writer George Pendle a literary executor in case anything publishable can be salvaged from the blog. Then I finally fall asleep close to three in the morning. This is not to say I was in some form of panic, just trying to size up my chances in an entirely unquanitifiable situation and acting accordingly.

Three hours later I wake up before my alarm. I shower and slowly dress in a thick white shirt and a flexible white denim trouser – nothing that inhibits movement, but tight enough not to be caught on a horn unless I am, and thick enough that protection against minor slashes is given. I tie the red bandana around my neck in reverse, so it appears like a cravat and thus mimics the blood of San Fermin in whose honour this festival is and who had his throat cut, and tie the red sash around my waist, wrapping it twice so there is no slack to catch. I am aware it is not advisable to wear belts with bulls as people are often caught by that first, and then when they don’t fly off the horn, the bull goes to work on them. However, I figure the nod to tradition outweighs the risk. I decide against wearing something different to the mob so I’ll stand out in photos. That’s not why I’m here. Then I walk out into the streets of Pamplona.

At the entrance to Town Hall square section of the run there are hundreds upon hundreds of people milling, moving, edging from foot to foot and emitting a combined stench of urine, alcohol and vomit that is nearly overwhelming. The one thing they do not stink of is fear – it doesn’t have a smell, despite what the novelists say. Fear in humans, as it is in animals, is a movement not an emission of odour – unless the perceiver is a dog.

I find my spot in the street with an hour to go and overhear a Australian man say to his sylph-like girlfriend,

“I’ll look after you.”

The astonishing naïvete of the remark makes me laugh. What is he going to do? Pick her up and throw her over the six foot fence which has people four deep on the bull-side? Whilst running? Because anything else he tries with a 650kg Miura (1,430lbs or 102 stone plus change) – for that is the average weight of these bulls – running at 30mph won’t even nudge it a degree off course. If he wants to save his girlfriend, he should get her out now, and if he’s that stupid he should follow suit himself.

I decide to take a little detour and head off the otherside of the course to a small church where the hardened runners gather – some Spanish, some Americans who have been doing it for as much as thirty years. I see them greet each other briefly, confident but focused like actors backstage, but instead of “break a leg” they say “suerte” as they part – “luck.” I run a little, testing the torn meniscus in the cartilage in my knee (which I can’t have operated on until I finish this book and which runs the risk of locking), stretch, then start slaloming between traffic bollards at a half sprint. By half past I’m dripping with sweat and adrenaline and as ready as I will ever be. Am I nervous? No. Not now. It is beyond the time for that. There had been moments the night before when I thought that, since no one knows me here, I could merely say I had done it. Or I could cry off and no one would judge. At least not in any way I would care about. But in that odd way the mind has – or at least my mind - having committed to an action of this type, I will go through unless I can find a way out. And for this one I can’t: even though they’re Miuras, even though it’s the weekend crowd, even though everyone else has bailed on me. I walk down the hill and take my place and wait.

As the time approaches the streets first thicken with people, then seem to clear. I later discover that this is an artificial density as the final section of the run is closed until ten minutes to eight. I find myself alone in a section of street which has a crowd on steps behind the barrier watching and I find it very odd to be walking once more on a stage at a time like this. However, with five minutes to go that feeling fades. That is when the false breaks begin: all of a sudden a group of people will get the jitters and run up the hill, convincing other people (with dodgy watches or dodgy brains) that the bulls have been released early, and they will run off up the hill. I have no idea if they then leave or decide to stay where they are, but they don’t return.

The minutes pass slowly. Incredibly slowly. In fact, I can safely say that no period of time in my life has ever passed that slowly. This is firing squad stuff. The background noise and movement of the runners escalates, so that when the clock tower bells chime the hour I do not hear them. However, I know my watch is good so I am not exactly surprised when a rocket explodes in the air, I am certainly ennervated though. Then come the joggers, people laughing off their fear and embarrassment, but having made the very clear decision that they want to be further away from whatever is about to happen. When the second rocket goes off a few seconds later, they accelerate and I have to turn sideways to let the rush past. Then I bend my knees a little and lean my shoulder downhill, forcing them to part round me because this is becoming a stampede. And then the bulls turn the corner at the bottom of the hill and the thin blue line of police holding the people and the bulls apart break off to the sides and the mass of people shatter and flee like a medieval rabble under a heavy cavalry charge.

Of the many things I have seen researching this book, again and again the phrase ‘never seen before’ springs to my lips, but this really was a sight that very few people in the modern era will see: a city put to flight through its own streets. As the bulls cleared their path up the hill and I attempted to hold my ground, people were running past screaming, grabbing at me, diving against the wall which was now thick with people trying to make sure they were not the front line. As the bulls got closer – it seemed like ten feet away, I would calculate from the images I have seen it was twenty – a clearer space in front of them enveloped me and I turned and started to run.

When I was a 400m runner at high school, I was very aware that you can think you are sprinting flat out, but then you look inside yourself and find an extra reserve of speed. However, this was not the case, I had enough adrenaline in me that I don’t doubt for a second I have never run faster and that if I hadn’t warmed up I would have done alot more than ended up with a twinge in my Achilles tendon as I did. However, the bulls were much, much faster. By the top of the hill – maybe fifteen yards away – the front ones passing me (the relatively harmless but massive steers), but one fighting bull to the rear was starting to chew through the people immediately behind me as can just be made out in the photo above. As it neared me, and the mass of people in the square began to push me and themselves towards its horns, I decided enough was enough and pushed myself back into the crowd on the side,  arms out to hold the people who were starting to fall upright (on the YouTube video below, you can see me from 35-37 seconds in, ending up in the top right of frame). The Miuras had passed, or so I thought.

I now jumped back into the middle of the street and went back to sprinting in a vain attempt to follow them, out of the town square, along Calle Mercaderes and into one of the most dangerous parts of the course, the corner of Calle Estafeta. As I reached it I was confronted with the sight of a fallen grey and white Miura, a suelto, getting onto his feet facing in the opposite direction to the now vanished herd: facing me. At his most dangerous – fresh, massively strong, and with no idea where he was or what to do – he was swinging his great horns back and forth looking for prey and I slammed on the breaks on the cobbled street (thank God for a decent pair of trainers), and went into speedy reverse. Soon there were people between the bull and me and I knew I was safe. Then he moved in the right direction and, unusually, a gate was closed behind him to keep the crowd safe. As I walked over to the railings to catch my breath a man was pulled out by paramedics from behind the barrier, blood pumping from his neck, some of it onto the right sleeve of my shirt as I later discovered. The wound was evidently bad, but he was holding the bandages to his own throat despite being on a stretcher, so I assumed he was relatively okay. And after a four day spell in intensive care he was.

Walking back from the corner, a sudden scream went up through the crowd, mainly in English, saying “more bulls.” This one I was ready for, having been forwarned. It was the giant steers, three of them in a row, charging through the street to clean up any sueltos, turned bulls, that may be remaining. So as people lept to either side, I continued near the middle of the road and applauded them as they passed. I may have been awash with fear and confusion a few moments before, but I was damned if I wasn’t going to have a little flourish.

I walked back to the hotel and called my parents and girlfriend to say I was alive, before I headed to a bar where I was told the American runners all met up to confirm the number left standing. It had been a bloody day: two in intensive care, two other serious gorings, a dozen minor injuries from human or bovine feet. However, as I introduced myself, I discovered these guys had all made it. One of them, a man called only Beef, said something telling to me when I said I didn’t know anyone there.

“Welcome. These guy’s are your friends for life.”

Despite that welcome, I decided to abandon them for some English and American first-time runners who were as hopped up on survival as I was and we drank from 8.30am until I fell onto my bed at 4pm. I had had enough of embellishing stories and drinking odd Navarese cocktails for one day. I even slept through Padilla´s bullfight, but to be fair, he hadn´t turned up for mine.

 

Alexander Fiske-Harrison – 3,220 words