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Showing posts with the label san fermín

Run, run, run

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It's Sanfermines up in Pamplona at the moment. You know the thing, white clothes, red neckerchiefs, running with bulls - the Hemingway book. I often listen to the 8 am news on the radio and, for the past few days, today was the last, they've been doing a live broadcast of the bull running. It only lasts a bit over a couple of minutes so it doesn't interfere too much with the real news. Once upon a time I lived in Ciudad Rodrigo. There too, but at Carnaval time, they have an encierro. The bulls run through the streets, lined with very solid, railway sleeper type, fences to the town square. Encierro means locking up so, when they get to the square, they are penned up. The bulls are led along the route by mansos, bulls but not fighting bulls. Manso means something like docile but a five to six hundred kilos of bull isn't my idea of something cuddly. The idea is that these mansos have done the route before so they lead the fighting bulls to their destination. We'd watch...