Ernest Hemingway loved Pamplona’s running of the bulls, but is his writing about it to blame for the festival’s overcrowding a century on?

Ernest Hemingway was so enamoured with Pamplona’s San Fermin festival that he went nine times and wrote about it in his debut novel, The Sun Also Rises

The book still inspires people to join in the festivities in northern Spain, but revellers are also drawn by the food, partying and, these days, YouTube videos

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Ernest Hemingway (front) attends a bullfight in Spain. The American author has been blamed for the overcrowding at Pamplona’s bull-running festival by writing about it in his 1926 novel “The Sun Also Rises”. Photo: Getty Images

Published: 4:15pm, 15 Jul 2023

The bell tolls – eight chimes. A fuse is lit and a rocket takes off. The pen doors open and out burst 12 behemoths – six bulls and six steers – working their pace up to a gallop, hooves thundering on the cobbled streets.

On cue, throngs of white-clad runners begin to sprint. They glance back, ready to dodge the charging beasts’ piked horns with balletic moves defying a gory demise. Enraptured onlookers cheer on from balconies above.

It’s the feast of St Fermin, the famed bull-running festival that engulfs downtown Pamplona every July when revellers from around the globe descend upon the northern Spanish city for nine days of adrenaline, sweat and debauchery savoured as freely as the wine flows. The 2023 edition ended on July 14.

Some are drawn to the Sanfermines – as the festival is popularly known – by the timeless prose of one of the grandees of 20th-century American literature.

Musicians wade through the crowd during the opening of the Sanfermines in Pamplona, in July 2023. Thousands of tourists descend on the northern Spanish city each year to participate in the bull-running festival. Photo: Reuters

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) became besotted with the Sanfermines on his first visit, exactly 100 years ago. The bull-running, the expert local bullfighters – and the hedonistic partying – captivated him so deeply that he returned eight times between 1924 and 1959.