I promised that today the cultural bit would be about the Corrida Vasco-Landesa, which this year takes place on Sunday 14th at 11am.
You have probably seen this picture before. When it was shown to us in History class, there was general laughter and remarks of “oé, them Minoics were from 'round here! Did they have recortadores too, then?” Ending questions with a pues is very typical of the Pamplona area, not so much from southern Navarra. I’ve known guys that 99% of the time you couldn’t tell where they were from other than “generic northern Spain”, but you could tell when they were nervous because the pueses came out of the woodwork.
Vasco is Spanish for Basque. Las Landas is one of the names of the Baja Navarra, la Behe, the Lower Navarra, the French Navarra, the French Euskalherria… Southwestern France. This is a kind of bullfight that’s exclusive of this area. There’s a feat called the “Don Tancredo,” where a guy simply stands in the center of the ring, stock still (he may be dressed in a bright-colored shirt, coattails and a top hat, or other similarly strange clothes; he may be standing on a chair) while a very confused bull looks for something to attack. This is often combined with other feats. There may be a part of acrobatic exhibition on its own (guys jumping over the bull, rolling under the bull, running straight to the bull and then rolling aside just as the charging bull lowers his head). But the central part is the recortadores contest.
Bulls attack things that move, hence why Don Tancredo can just stand there and be treated as some sort of skinny tree. If you run in front of a bull, he’ll follow you. If a bull is following you and something else runs by, closer than you are, the bull will switch targets. The “something else” is “cutting it close,” he’s doing a recorte. The same verb recortar is used for cutting shapes out of paper, for example.
The contest is fought in paired teams. Some pairs go to every contest in the area; the prices can be equivalent to 5 months’ salary, that’s without counting what you may get from bets. They’re given wooden rings with cloth streamers; each team gets a different color. They may be in one pair at a time, or two, or three; which will it be is indicated beforehand in the rules for the specific contest. The objective is to insert the wooden rings onto the bull’s horns: the team that gives the bull more of their color, wins. Some contests have prizes both for most rings and most beautiful fight. The general tactic is to have one member of the pair run ahead of the bull and then the other one cross through the path, close enough to drop a ring on the bull’s horns. It is considered bad form to try and drop a bunch of rings on the same horn at the same time (it “detracts from the show”), but dropping one on each horn in a single pass is very well considered. Something I’ve only seen a few times is one guy running directly to the bull and jumping over him, dropping one ring on each horn.
It’s a beautiful show and I truly recommend it, unless you think you’re going to be too nervous about the guys. The bulls don’t get hurt at all except for not being able to hit any of those damn bouncing frogs.
A San Fermín venimos
por ser nuestro patrón
nos guíe en el encierro
dándonos su bendición.
Marqués de Domecq bulls. Yes, the same Domecq family as the sherry and brandies, if you’re familiar with them. Another brand with a dangerous reputation; the comentator has said the average is 0.8 piercing wounds per run, but 1.2 for these… Mind you, since they haven’t separated weekend and weekday runs, that’s not figures I trust 100%.
Five blacks, one brownback. One has slipped before reaching City Hall Square, may have pierced accidentally a guy who’d slipped in the same spot. They’re very separated in Estafeta, two way ahead, one way behind. Some woman there has the kind of lungs who prompt people from Navarra and Aragon to say she should try her hand at singing jotas, man she’s sure screaming a lot! Now “I’m wounded” screams, just “this is so scary/exciting” ones.
Most of the bulls are already in, but that one which had slipped is way behind and keeps trying to turn back; he’d slipped again in the bend and had a lot of trouble getting back up (curiously enough, his brothers had taken the curve a tad slower and more centered than usual, he’s the only one who’s slipped). I’ve seen several nice recortes pointing him back in the right direction and a moron who just got himself a whack from the cowherds for moving backwards (if you read City Hall’s advice, it’s one of the Do Nots, because it prompts the bull to turn back). He’s now in Telefónica, trying to break apart the fence. That spot has cleared fast so no wounded there, but then a guy has crossed his field of vision on his way to the fence on the other side and the bull has gone for him. He’s in the ring.
It’s been the longest run so far this year, most had been very fast.
Normally after the last bull goes in, the doors are left open for several minutes so guys can walk into the ring as well; this time since that last bull had turned around so many times, they’ve closed the doors almost on his ass and half a dozen foralitos (regional police) have jumped in to keep guys from trying to open them.
They’re showing a runner being loaded into an ambulance lying facedown; that usually means he’s got a puncture wound on the foreleg (the “ball” of muscle below the knee, normally). There’s one in Telefónica in such bad shape that they’re driving the ambulance to him, rather than bringing him to the ambulance. Note that since as I said yesterday the ring’s infirmary (which is very close to where he was) is very well-supplied, if they’re doing this it means it’s very-big-letters-BAD. Another one, they were carrying him in arms between a Red Cross guy and several volunteers, blood was clearly visible on his red shirt and white trousers.

Red Cross report: 4 piercing wounds, may be 5. Many, many people with traumatisms, including one with a bleeding scalp wound. The image they’re showing now is… I don’t have words. A volunteer from the Red Cross and two in civilian clothes, already bent down to tend to a wounded guy while the central group of bulls and oxen passes by. Dramatic, I think is the word. Poignant?
Report from the hospital that centralizes care for Sanfermines (two of the hospitals in town are 200yd apart and the others don’t have trauma units): 4 with piercing wounds (the reporter has figured one in torso, one in bum, one in thigh - those where the parts where the EMT personnel were applying pressure; no special pressure seen on the fourth but he was face down so it’s presumed to be foreleg) and the scalp wound looks pretty bad, they’re running a TAC on him. The torso one looks on screen like it may have at least two distinct paths (that’s wounds in normalspeak) if not three. He was able to roll off to the bottom of the wall on his own, once the bull dropped him and before the shock set in.
To give you an idea how bad it’s been, the previous days the report from the hospital was given by the ER’s director and he wore a smile (the first day he kept trying to be serious and failing, I imagine they then told him that there’s nothing wrong with smiling when the news you have is “three wounded and we expect to send them all home by lunch”). Today, by the time the connexion ended, there wasn’t an official report from the hospital yet.