Big Adventures, Little World

San Fermin Opening Ceremony

The Spanish sure do have the craziest festivals! Although, this could possibly mainly be because of all the tourists that now go to them and make them that way. After participating in La Tomatina last year though, and now the San Fermin festival, among all the other ones I haven’t been too, it’s quite evident that the Spanish sure do know how to throw some pretty crazy festivals!

After spending 21 hours on a bus we had arrived at our campsite in Estella, Spain, about 40 minutes outside of Pamplona and spent the afternoon sitting around the pool and drinking beers, and spent most of the night doing the same thing. The next morning was the opening ceremony of the festival so we were up early to make our way into the main square in Pamplona where most of the action happens. Basically, everyone wears white, as well as a red scarf tied around their wrist, and about 5 minutes before midday (the official start time) everyone holds up their scarves in the air and waves them around until a big cannon goes off signifying that the festival has begun. Everyone then puts the scarves around their necks and then are not supposed to take them off again until the end of the festival.

Once the cannon goes off then it’s pretty much a free for all covering everyone’s nice white clothes in sangria, champagne, eggs, flour, shaving cream and anything else you have. At the end of it you come out with your clothes stained red from all the sangria, and when you pay about 3 Euros for 2L of it, you can get a few bottles for yourself and a few to drown people in. Elese, Sarah and I covered each other in all the Sangria we could as well as anyone else around us and then finally it all started to settle down as people ran out of sangria and were covered in so much of it that there was nothing left to do.

We made our way out of the main square and headed along some of the streets where all the locals would be hanging out their windows from above pouring buckets of water out to help wash or hydrate or just wet anyone standing below. It was quite refreshing to get hit by the cold water and also removed some of the sticky sangria which was nice, but we later found out it could be quite dangerous as well, as in previous years some people had had their faces sliced by falling buckets! There is no such thing as public liability insurance throughout Europe, I’m sure! We kept wandering the packed streets with everyone in their white clothes with red scarves and sashes until we made our way to a statue known as the Mussel Bar.

Someone jumping from The Mussel Bar fountain

The Mussel Bar is statue/fountain in a small square where during San Fermin one year, a group of Australians decided it would be a good idea to climb to the top, and then jump off into their friend’s arms and have them catch them. Now this statue is about 10-15 feet high in different places and surround by cobblestone streets, so it isn’t really the smartest of things to do, but I guess if some people were stupid enough and had enough sangria in them then it would seem like a good idea. This was the one thing that the tour guides strongly advised against doing and even being in amongst and catching people as they can come down hard on your arms and break arms or wrists in the process. We stood there and watched as a few people climbed up and jumped off and some of them could barely even stand up, yet they were climbing up and jumping off and some even doing flips! It was painful to watch as once people jumped there was always a brief moment as they disappeared into the crowd and you had no idea if they would be getting back up again or not. After a watching a few that was enough and then we walked off again through the city and to the town hall square were we met up with Ryan before we had to get back on the bus and head back to the campsite where we could get cleaned up and relax.

Once we got back to the campsite we did just that and went straight for the showers, put some clean clothes on then went and sat around the pool. We talked with a few other and heard stories of someone jumping from the Mussel Bar, trying to do a back flip and missing the people to below trying to catch him and ending up landing on his head on the ground. The stories we heard told of how because of the amount of people it took 45 minutes for an ambulance to make their way in, but was only 15 minutes after he jumped that someone else had climbed back up and jumped off again. I’m not sure if it is true or not, the person who jumped and back flipped supposedly died later in hospital, which would not surprise me at all. Our tour guide had also told of a story when he was there watching a previous year where he watched someone die. There is actually more deaths and injuries each year from people jumping off the Mussel Bar than during the running of the bulls. The rest of the afternoon/evening we just relaxed by the pool and had some drinks while the music played into the night.