A first visit to Pamplona in Spain. Pamplona is famous for the Festival of San Fermin and The Running of the Bulls, where bulls chase young men through the streets before they are taken off to the bull ring to be slaughtered in bull fights. For me this is a horrible business, torturing animals to death as entertainment. But while they have a huge bull ring built in the 1920s where enthusiasts attend throughout the year, and the Festival happens in the summer when we definitely did not visit, Pamplona is a beautiful small city nestled in the hills below the Pyrennes mountains. In the old quarter the tiny medieval streets wind around the central square. There are balconies with iron railings on each floor of the skinny apartment buildings, all jammed together higgledy-piggledy. It’s not Paris where the grand Haussmann buildings all conform to a series of preset styles. In Pamplona each building is different, with a unique architecture and sometimes vibrant colors.
We visited the Cafe Iruña where Hemingway stayed when he came for the festival. I think the city is sick of Hemingway, I only saw him twice, once as a cut steel silhouette on the side of a building, then as a mannequin in the window of a discount clothing store, advertising their fishing gear.
Back in the day my parents got engaged in Pamplona. In the early 50s they visited on vacation, and I can’t help thinking that they visited the Iruña as well. I like to think their youthful shades were sitting at the next table laughing and flirting, while we enjoyed our pinchos.