100 years ago the world and the fiesta looked much different than it does today. The “war to end all wars” had finally come to an end on November 11, 1918 and the world was ready to move on. It would still be a few years before Papa Hemingway made his way south from Paris to Navarra’s capital of Pamplona, essentially to do some fly fishing in the Pyrenees, but the fiesta had caught his attention.
In 1919 the Fiestas y Ferias de San Fermín spanned 13 days and nights beginng on July 6, with the Grandes Corridas de Toros, the for-runner to today’s Feria del Toro, the festival of the bull, covering 5 days, from July 7 through the 11, when such preeminent matadors as Belmonte and Dominguin, whom Hemingway would later write about, entertained the overflowing crowds that filled Spain’s second largest bullring, the Plaza de Toros de Pamplona.
By the 1970s the scope of the festival was cut back to it’s present 9 days, from July 6 through July 14, giving us eight days of the encierros, the running of the bulls.
Contact Sanfermin Tours to arrange a special package for you in Pamplona for Sanfermines 2019, and the running of the bulls.
