Blood, Signage and semi-nudity: Animal Rights Activists, seen here making themselves obvious.
change into the appropriate get-up. For about €10 you can buy the whole kit on the street. While I’m not certain what the open container, public intoxication or nudity laws are in Spain, if the establishment turns a blind eye for San Fermin, they completely ignore the mayhem for a World Cup victory. It wasn’t all fiesta. Spain apparently has the same professional worriers and killjoys as America. There were protestors from organizations like PETA, but in the mêlée drastic measures were taken to not get lost in the crowd. The measure was pockets of women wearing plastic horns, buff panties, and nothing else holding up signs in various languages. The message was universal: “Shame on you!” They were delightful girls but with one passing glance it was obvious which ones were the true believers and which were the actresses and models on PETA payroll. I don’t want to appear ungrateful, semi-nude is semi-nude, but anyone who has witnessed a protest rally knows that true believers are generally not lookers. That’s why they scream and hold placards, so people will notice them. Really good-looking people rarely have to resort to signage or covering themselves in blood to get attention – they just smile. Really good-looking people are also getting invited to be naked by nearly everyone who can work up the nerve. Unlike the average true believer, they’ve got nudity options. Can you imagine a semi-nude National Organization of Women rally? You couldn’t unsee that. “Alright, free day-care in the workplace…just, for the love of God…put your shirt back on!” Actually, that sort of distinction happens with the bulls, too. Mixed in with the dozen or so fearsome wild black bulls were some tame brown ones (who weigh about the same). The brown ones, for the record, are not petting zoo candidates. They are trained to run from the pen to the ring and keep the black ones from getting turned around. They are not there to talk their wild brethren down should you run afoul of one. We’d been told that rockets would signal the start of the run, but perhaps Spain’s financial woes were already starting to
8 |MARCH 2011
pinch. What they called a rocket sounded more like a firecracker or someone dropping a broom. Still, the mob lurched forward and if you missed that you’d get trampled. I wedged myself between Larry the American and Simon the Australian because they seemed sober and limber as opposed to 99% of the crowd that was still slinging sangria and beer on each other. It hardly mattered though, this wasn’t a race in any traditional sense: it was forward falling mosh pit. I’d been knocked around like this before, but I was 19 and it was a Clash concert. It’s hard to run full speed for long distances when you are completely blotto, so despite the home crowd’s relative age advantage, we thinned out along the route quickly. I have no idea what kind of carnage was taking place behind me because I wasn’t about to look back. Larry, in better shape than me, was taking the full out run in stride. Then he looked. The human face is capable of radical transformation: the perfectly pleasant face of an American enjoying a spirited jaunt in a foreign country turned to get a bearing on the stampeding herd behind us. The face that pivoted back was decidedly more business-like. We might even call it pensive. Then, from behind, came a surge of laggards trying to make one last effort to stay ahead of the bulls. Larry and Simon were gone and some caped Spaniard was at my right. When he tried to climb me I decided it was time to change tack. I stumbled headlong to a wall. The caped Spaniard fell, knocked over by a guy getting knocked over by a bull. Despite the connectivity, I can’t say I felt one with the universe. The only thing to do is flatten yourself and pray for the bubble wrap of drunken Spanish good will. Once the herd overtakes you, jump back in and keep running to the bullring. There you’ll find yourself in the ring with the angry and confused wild bulls that suddenly realize there is no escape from their predicament. Which common sense tells you is exactly where you don’t want to be.