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Hemingway Adventure
Pamplona, Spain (fourth day)
Hemingway, in white pants, has a go in the 'amateurs', 1925.
On Hemingway's advice I leave the hotel at half past five this second morning to be sure of a ringside seat to watch the amateur bullfight that takes place at the end of the encierro. 'Pamplona is the toughest bullfight town in the world,' he wrote in the Toronto Star Weekly. The amateur fight that comes immediately after the bulls have entered the pens proves that.'This may be Ernest pumping himself up a little for, though there is no evidence that he ever ran with the bulls, there is a photograph of him dodging horns at the 'amateurs'.
Certainly the ring fills up fast, but the great number of spectators are teenagers, excited boys and girls who throw themselves energetically into Mexican waves and sing-alongs. A tired brass band plays in the middle of the ring. The only really hard behaviour comes from an angry young man with a shaved head who seems determined to take on the rest of the world with a virtuoso display of taunts, leers and obscene gestures.
The crowd takes against him immediately. He is punched and kicked and pushed down the stands into the ring where, to enormous applause, the police lead him off. Support for the authorities seems unanimous.
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PALIN'S GUIDES
- Series: Hemingway Adventure
- Chapter: Pamplona, Spain (fourth day)
- Country/sea: Spain
- Place: Pamplona
- Book page no: 106
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