Running with the bulls in Pamplona, Hemingway´s love affair

Festival of San Fermín.

The opening of the fiesta is marked by setting off pyrotechnic chupinazo. The rocket is launched at 12:00 noon on the 6th of July from a City Hall balcony with thousands of people celebrating the act in the city hall square in Pamplona.

The Festival lasts nine days, and each morning at 8 o´clock, the bulls are set loose on the city streets. Spanish bullfighting funs, "Mozos", run with the bulls in Pamplona and respect the bull, because this animal represents power, life and the great wild.

Hemingway understood this and he wrote that he enjoyed watching town wild animals run together, one on two legs, and the other on four.

Pamplona was his obsession and because of that he travelled to this town on nine ocassions for San Fermín fiesta of bullfighting.

                                                  

Hemingway with Mary at Pamplona´s bullring

There is no doubt that many of the thousands of people who enjoy the Festival at present, come from America and England, influenced by Hemingway´s work, decided to experience the running with the bulls on these narrow streets and anxious to stay where Hemingway himself watched the corrida.

Test your knowledge of Hemingway, one of the finest American novelists, short story writer and journalist, and take a quiz or play a game about his life and work:      

http://www.funtrivia.com/quizzes/literature/authors_h-k/ernest_hemingway.html