Pamplona, San Fermín: from the saint's niche to the bullring: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
The San Fermín bull-run street and the old town
San Fermín is both a saint and a street party: the chapel where his image is kept, the church where tradition says he was baptised, the square where the rocket opens the fiesta, and the streets the bulls take, with the cathedral and a small chapel of the old town on the way.
The stops
Every morning of the fiesta, runners gather at this niche in the old city wall and sing to San Fermín three times, at 7:55, 7:57 and 7:59, in Spanish and Basque, asking for his protection before the run. The city council set the niche into the wall in 1981; in the 1970s the saint's image had stood in a window of the former military hospital. During the fiesta it holds an image from 1978 that belongs to the peñas, and for the rest of the year a replica owned by the city.
Photo: Joanbanjo — CC BY-SA 3.0 This church keeps San Fermín, co-patron of Navarre, in a chapel of his own for most of the year. The city council had the chapel built between 1696 and 1717 on a Greek-cross plan, with a red-brick lantern decorated with coloured tiles bearing the city's coat of arms. The procession on the morning of 7 July sets out from here, and for centuries the church stood as a fortress at the western edge of the town.
Photo: Kent Wang — CC BY-SA 4.0 The present Gothic church is from the 13th century, and its two medieval towers rise to about 55 metres. The clock tower has been topped since 1795 by the popular little rooster of San Cernín, and on every morning of the run its clock announces the 8:00 start. During the procession of 7 July, the song Agur jaunak is sung to San Fermín in front of this church, where tradition says he was baptised.
Photo: Kent Wang — CC BY-SA 4.0 In 1423 King Charles III of Navarre issued the Privilege of the Union, merging Pamplona's three rival boroughs, Navarrería, San Cernín and San Nicolás, into one municipality, and the new city hall was built on the open ground where they met. The square grew up beside it as the civic centre. It is the stage of the fiesta's opening rocket, the chupinazo, on 6 July, and the bull run crosses it every morning.
Photo: GUIA ILUSTRADA — CC BY-SA 4.0 With Calle Curia, this street was the main street of the old Navarrería borough, laid out in 1324. Its name probably comes from the many merchants who kept shops here from at least the 16th century, and from 1916 to 1972 it was called Calle Doña Blanca de Navarra. The run uses only about 70 metres of it, ending in the famous curve, a turn of a little over 90 degrees to the right into Estafeta where the herd often slams into the fence or slips.
Photo: Davidh820 — CC BY-SA 3.0 es The Gothic cathedral was built between 1394 and 1501 after its Romanesque predecessor collapsed in 1391, and its neoclassical façade was designed by Ventura Rodríguez in 1783. Excavations in 1994 showed that the site is the oldest part of Roman Pompaelo, with streets and buildings from the 1st century BC. Navarre's medieval kings were crowned here, and on 7 July the city council comes to the cathedral forecourt to collect the cathedral chapter before the saint's procession.
Photo: Fernando — CC BY-SA 4.0 This small chapel on Calle Calderería was given in 1456 to a confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, which tradition says Bishop Arnaldo de Barbazán founded in 1317. Its front dates from 1755: a plasterwork frame around a niche with Saint Martin on horseback sharing his cloak with a beggar. Beside it stand the Cuarticos de San Martín, a hospice that traditionally took in poor widows.
Photo: JLVwiki — CC BY-SA 4.0 Estafeta is one of the longest streets of the old town, about 315 metres, and it holds the longest straight stretch of the run. It is named for a post office, an estafeta, that stood here in the 18th century; before that it was called Calle de San Tirso, after a church, and earlier the Rúa de la Zaga del Castillo. The run first went along it in 1856, and the original route had ended in Plaza del Castillo.
Photo: JLVwiki — CC BY-SA 4.0 Pamplonese call this square their living room. It takes its name from two castles that once stood on the site, and bullfights were held in it until 1843: the first fence for the run was built in 1776 to a ring in this square, and the original route ended here. The bandstand in the middle has stood here since 28 June 1943.
Photo: Jean-Christophe BENOIST — CC BY 3.0 Rafael Huerta's bronze group was unveiled on 6 July 1994 and enlarged in 2007; the first version had only two runners and one bull. It now has nineteen figures, six bulls, three steers and ten runners, in a group eleven metres long. Huerta put himself in as one of the runners lying on the ground.
Photo: Pmk58 — CC BY-SA 4.0 Ernest Hemingway had been visiting the fiesta since 1923, and his novel The Sun Also Rises, published in Spanish as Fiesta, did much to make it known worldwide. This granite block topped by a bronze bust, by the sculptor Luis Sanguino, was unveiled on 6 July 1968 after the opening rocket, with Hemingway's widow Mary Welsh present. It stands at the start of the Paseo de Hemingway, beside the passage through which the run enters the bullring.
Photo: Ismael Olea — CC BY 4.0 The bullring opened for San Fermín on 7 July 1922, designed by the San Sebastián architect Francisco Urcola in reinforced concrete. Rafael Moneo's 1966 reform left the concrete ribs in view and brought the capacity to 19,720. It is where the run ends each morning, and in the first months of 1939 it was used as a concentration camp for Republican prisoners, officially for 3,000.
Photo: Kent Wang from Barcelona, Spain — CC BY-SA 2.0
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