Toro. This is the Spanish word for bull. A short and strong word. During San Fermin festival, bull is the King in Pamplona. Although the festival is dedicated to San Fermin, everything goes around the bull. A week before San Fermin bulls arrive in Pamplona from their homelands in Castilla and Andalucia. You may visit those splendid animals at Corrales del Gas, Errotazar Street. They spend their last days in Pamplona in a beautiful and quiet place close to Arga River. When you see them so relaxed, it is difficult to realize how fierce and brave may be in streets and bullring.
The night before their running, bulls, acompanied by oxen, go from Corrales del Gas to Corralillos de Santo Domingo. They will sleep there and at 8 o’clock in the morning, they will play the main role in the most famous race in world. Pamplona stops breathing during the two or three minutes bulls need to arrive at the Bull Ring.
Those six bulls will die at the arena that afternoon. Lots of runners will attend this ceremony as spectators at the Bull Ring.
This ancestral rite about life and death will be completed some days later, when you eat a delicious ‘estofado de toro’, bull meat cooked with potatoes, carrots, spices and some other secret ingredients.
You may think we are cruel and behave as barbarians, so let’s discuss about it…
5 comments ↓
1 Johnie Walker | Mar 12, 2008 | 14:51
Oh, Dear! I’m drunk, the street is moving…
2 argignano | Mar 17, 2008 | 23:47
How do you cook it?
3 Sub Hihhanah | Mar 26, 2008 | 8:40
Bull meat, onions, garlic, potatoes, carrots, red wine, salt and water. You need about three hours to cook it
4 Miguel | Jul 26, 2008 | 15:28
1-Which is the origin of the encierro ?
2-Which is it’s purpose ?
3-Its somewhat like to feel nearest the contact with the bull as an agent of reminder us of our animals innermost instincts ?
4-Somewhat that thanks to the bull we don t lost our contact with nature on a basic sense ?
5-That s way the man run not far from the bull ?
6-Is somewhat like the bull remind to us our sexual nature as a source of energy to face the reality ?
7-Is somewhat like to evoke the “bull” inside us,as a force of Nature as an ancestral heritage ?
Desde Argentina un gran abrazo mis vascuences !
5 estafetakoa | Jul 29, 2008 | 8:35
Some centuries ago, when there were no trucks, bulls came to Pamplona walking. As native were drunk, because they were holding San Fermin festival, they started to run with bulls in their way to the bullring. At the beginning, it was illegal, but it has become a tradition.
This is the origin of the Encierro; trying to find a deeper sense may be a bit snob…
Viva Argentina y el Pipa Gancedo!!!
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