Festival of St. Fermin - Bull Running Agenda
For the July bull-running festival, there are parades during the day for the - large puppets over head. If you arrive in the middle of one, however, expecting to see macho, athletic young men flexing all over the place, think again.
Pamplona, Parade, Spain.
This has become family reunion time. All the strollers and spouses. There are plenty of young people, sleeping in the park like old Woodstock or something, and the partying goes on all night. Still, the impression is of middle aged people coming back to relive what they did or wished they did, or made up that they did, this time with the kids. All is red and white. For all ages and shapes. No place to go, so just turn off the ignition and let the parades flow around you. Get out and join in.
History: Plenty to do after the run. Pamplona was a Roman town 75 BC - near the Basque area and town of Iruna. It does not subdue - as the Visigoths and Moors found. Even Charlemagne and his Franks were stopped by the Basques at Roncesvalles nearby. In medieval times, there were three towns at that basic spot, with differing populations - Basque, French (see how close to the Pyrenees) and a mix of others. The French tried to take it definitively in 1521, lost, and Ignatius Loyola - who fought there - was wounded and later founded the Jesuits. For a long time, Pamplona was frontier. Walls, fort.
Listen. The Song of Roland at ://omacl.org/Roland/. Here is an online translation of this old French poem, about the son of Charlemagne and his death at Roncesvalles. At ://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/roland-ohag.html.
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