Pandemonium in Pamplona
It was the summer of 1983, Pamplona Spain. The Running of the Bulls was in full swing and everywhere I looked mayhem ensued. It was truly the wildest, craziest scene I’d ever witnessed in my life.
Imagine hundreds of severely inebriated, bleary-eyed men shouting in every conceivable language. Most of them wore white clothes and had tied a red sash or bandana around their necks or through their belt loops in order to draw the hungry beasts’ attention to the blood color they’re wildly attracted to. It sounds like a scene out of a Hemingway novel. The men (there might have been some women running, but I didn’t see any) ran down a narrow street with the bulls running after them. This was the ultimate display of machismo but it was obvious these guys were scared shitless. You could see the whites of their eyes as the crowds cheered them on and the bulls were on their heels. They constantly flung their heads over their shoulders praying they were putting enough distance between themselves and those sharp bull horns. Every year some unlucky schmo manages to fall back and get gored in the gut, causing the crowd to scream louder. From my perspective, the whole scene was disgusting. And the bulls end up in a slaughterhouse by the time the week of lunacy is done. The thing that keeps the momentum going and provokes normally sane, lucid human beings from throwing themselves into such madness is alcohol. Oh, and tons of misplaced bravado.
This crazy adventure began when my sister and I were backpacking around Europe and met up with some friends in Madrid. We all decided to head down to Pamplona together to see with our own eyes what, until then, had been snippets of news I’d managed to catch when an American was gored by a bull the year before.
You know how these experiences unfold, right? You’re sitting in a bar back home, chatting with a friend. The TV is on and you peek and see some poor sucker getting attacked by a bull’s horn. Blood is gushing. It’s a horrifying yet riveting sight. What the heck is going on? Are they showing bull fights on US television now? You’re repulsed, yet intrigued. You see the words Running of the Bulls and Pamplona splashed at the bottom of the screen.
Of course, once we were in Pamplona, we realized there wasn’t a hostel, hotel, motel, or any other place with a bed available for miles in any direction. We had met some Norwegian guys in San Sebastian who had offered to ‘protect us.’ At that point we weren’t sure what we needed protecting from but they were sweet and cute so we went along with their plan to meet at a certain time the next day at Hemingway Square. We waited and waited and they never showed up. In the meantime, hands were grabbing our behinds, our breasts, anything they could grasp on to. Tongues were coming at us. We were in no man’s land, civility was cast to the wind, floating with the stench of alcohol along for the ride. We were four women in the midst of hundreds of men with sangria splashing out of plastic cups, dripping down their white clothes. We needed to find some seemingly sane and brave humans to hang out with, and fast.
We noticed a group of guys hanging out by the bust of Ernest. We sidled up to them and listened to them speak. Yes! They spoke our language, with a sexy accent, maybe Australian, we couldn’t be sure. We introduced ourselves and told them how we needed someone to fend off the claws of the crass, drunken heathens that abounded all around us. Turns out they were really nice guys from New Zealand and one of them was pretty darn cute. There were four of us and we’d made a pact to stick together no matter what. There were about six Kiwi’s who, we found out, actually lived in England and were here on a camping tour. They had tents at the local campground. We had a place to stay for the night! Our groups splintered off as the day and night progressed but as long as we were with one of the guys, we knew we could all meet up at their campground at the end of the debauchery.
I ended up with the cute one. His name was Alan from Christchurch and he was very much the gentleman. We took in the sights, the sounds, the smells, in awe. We watched people in the upper floors of apartments throw water on the hot tourists in the square below. We drank whatever liquids anyone offered to us, we staggered, we held hands, we threw up, we kissed and we had crazy sex in a public park with people standing around watching us do the deed. I couldn’t have cared less. Late, that night, or maybe it was early the next morning, we finally made it back to the campground and exchanged stories with our compadres.
The other guys weren’t very handsome and one had some serious dental issues. But I was in love. We spent a wild, amorous night in his little pup tent and in the morning it was time to say goodbye to Pamplona.
All these years later I still marvel at how much madness and merriment we managed to pack into one 24 hour period. It wasn’t the end of my story with Alan from Christchurch. But it was the end of a once in a lifetime encounter with pandemonium in Pamplona.
