quiero bailar
Spain:Madrid:Plaza Mayor
arriving at pamplona was no biggie, just an early 7am train ride through some nice Catalunya and Navarra countryside, and we get there early afternoon, surprisingly there are soliciters for rooms to rent, but we had the fortune of getting reservations by calling back in toledo, where my suffering spanish worked some magic. first impressions were that it was a much bigger and more modern city than imagined, seems always to be the case with my imagination at least, and the crowd volume wasn´t so shoulder to shoulder as one also might have imagined. it was obvious that there was a festival going on, the key indication simply being the all white with red sash and necktie costumes visible on most everyone underneath the sun. so we cab it to the pension pamplona since we were supposed to have arrived by then and meet the same confused guy at the door that i spoke with on the phone. he looked just like i imagined. he seemed confused or distraught that we had reservations, but led us to a room with 3 beds all the same. being more hungry than exhausted for the time being we made it to the plaza del castillo for some average greasy tapas and bocadillo, skirted some of the main “fiesta” looking streets and saw that there was quite a party going on, blurry red and white everywhere, people sleeping all over the plaza and surrounding benches and not just because it was siesta time, but even more people drinking and dancing it up inside and out of the sundry narrow cafes that populate the city. after a good rest we came back out, got some better food and hit the streets for orientation. good solid partying, and everywhere. typical spanish hole in the wall bar/restarauntes had been converted on the fly to swingin discos. impromtu clanging and banging street parades came out of nowhere and stopped when it came time for the members to get another beer. t-shirt kiosks and shopping carts full of iced san miguel and cruz campo. games like “peg the wooden effigy with an egg” drew large numbers of participants and spectators, ironically taking place in front of a bank so that “misses” splattered the black metal gate. punks and dogs and kids and moms and many many drunk men of all ages eat tapas and drink sangria, but mostly there is dancing everywhere to all of the current “summer hits” like “yo quiero bailar” (i want to dance), and of course many other hilarious brands of techno like my favorite, marriachi house, or better yet, the recurring pamplona theme/hit “who let the dogs out?” which surprisingly wasn´t modified to “who let the toros out?”. rise at 7am for uneventful bulls running, we didn´t get good enough places and didn´t want to climb anything all that high, even though many others were climbing street signs, traffic lights, and even on to empty balconies. whole thing lasts like two minutes and i saw one bull trot by at a relatively slow speed. later we get tickets for the bullfight from a scalper and at 6:30 head in for the show. this is where things got interesting… apparently one ought not be late to a corrida if sitting in the “sol” section vs. the much more civilised “sombra”. of course we had no idea and coming in after the first bull had been dropped we were immediately doused in sangria, first in worrying little splatters but ultimately in giant cupfuls, fruits and all, and even in those old fashioned spray bottles, i retaliated, quite confused mind you, by pouring my beer over a dude that dumped his cup on me at point blank range, only to meet his confused expression afterwards…you see, everyone gets this and for a variety of reasons, none of which are extremely evident, and all of which bend to the whims of the mob. speculations: not in the white and red costume, entering late, standing up while those behind you sit, and just being a girl… and wow did morgan get it bad…nevertheless we made it to the utmost of upper bleachers, where pitying souls made room for us, and the brass band honked and clanged at the end of matches. once the sangria shock wore off and the fiesta took hold, it was quite an event. the bullfight itself, take it or leave it, is quite a gruesome execution and much gorier in real life than you can imagine. however, the party was in the bleachers, singing and sharing sangria and bocadillos and ole’s! the rest of the night brought us back to the streets for more serious drinking and impromptu parade participating, a highlight being a heavy metal guitar/drums duo that played selections from master of puppets, while a quite normal but quite drunken old eggshaped spanish guy danced a bizarre discoish number. waking at 6:30 the next morning was barely doable but we managed, besides i had decided to run, hangover and all. got down there on calle estafeta about 7am, which was plenty early enough, in fact you can enter up till 5 minutes or so before. but once those side barricades are closed…you be runnin…not that its really a dangerous affair at all if you play it safe, the bulls pretty much mind there own and only go nuts if they are seperated from the herd or provoked, which happens by the spaniards who run along side them swatting away at their backsides with rolled up newspapers…caramba…