For rigs party, I’ll bring some old fashioned Tendido de Sol fare.
These are the kinds of seats in a Spanish bullring. Barrera (fence) are tickets that get you to stand between the ring’s inner fence and the seats proper. You basically can get those only if you have the proper cousins and brothers-in-law. Altos (high) are those where you’re at the very top of the seats; these exist only on the shadow side - they’re less murderously expensive than shadow. Shadow are those which will be in the shadow during all the fight; those are usually occupied by people who are going there to, you know, watch the fight. Sun-and-shadow are the ones that spend part of the fight in the sunlight and part in the shadow; they happen to be (as evident as this may seem, not everybody realizes it) between the “shadow” and “sun” seats. Sol (sun) spends the whole fight in the sun except on those strange occasions when The Bright Ball In The Sky is feeling lazy. Sol seats are the cheapest, since the glare and heat make them uncomfortable. Another thing that makes them uncomfortable is that the “peñas” (groups of friends, which may be legally established NPOs or not) are noisy… and since someone decided that throwing food at each other is fun, dirty. Foods for Sun are chosen with the utmost care, among other things, for their coloring ability.
Sun is traditionally the hardest side to please in all rings, and Pamplona is considered the hardest ring to please by a lot of bullfighters (Las Ventas in Madrid is also hard to please but they don’t have the skill for personal attacks that people have in Pamplona - if you fail in Pamplona, your ancestors’ ears will ring to the seventh generation); if they don’t like the bullfighter’s work, they say it and say it loud. Where food leftovers (the bullfight falls smack on dinner time) used to be sometimes tossed at the fighter to show displeasure, now some people are bringing a sandwich to eat and a pot of spaghetti in tomato sauce to throw at friends.
The dishes I’m bringing are from before that started, 'cos even when I was going to the ring with my friends we always went to watch the run/fight/landesa (I’ll tell you about the landesa on Thursday); when I went with my ultra-serious Dad even more. So I’ve been of a mind to tell some people to geroff my lawn since I was knee-high to them.
Let me introduce you to calderete. NOT, cooked with whole pieces of garlic (you don’t eat them), whole green peppers (you don’t eat them either), chunks of lamb and of rabbit (you do eat these). Should have enough water to mash the NOT. Every Spanish region has a dish that seems to consist of “X as a base and whatever else was handy”, this is one of ours. Also some menestra, another traditional dish: artichokes (from Tudela, eh! The best in the world!), habas (a type of bean), peas, flat green beans, fresh white asparagus (also from Tudela, no damnit, these aren’t Chilean or Chinese, I specifically went to a guy who sells from his field). Since I recall we have some vegetarians, I’ve made it without bacon or boiled egg, but we have those in small separate containers so you can add them if you like them; a dash of tomato sauce (I’ve also made it meatfree) can be good too. Of course, a rare but very Sanferminero pleasure: bull stew. Yes, that’s from the bulls that’ve been fought. You may have heard of the practice to reward a good bullfighter with one or two ears, or even two ears and tail: this has actual economic consequences as each piece means 1/4 of the bull’s meat. Not so important nowadays, when bullfighters get a lot of money (they also have very high expenses), but imagine back when mounted bullfighters were knights and those on foot peasants - getting half a bull was an enormous reward!
And since we’re not in the ring, I’m also bringing some lamb ribs for the grill (no sauce), which is a common lunch. Would you like some roast chiken? Very popular for recena; redinner. You didn’t really think we spend all night up just drinking and making noise, right? We drink, eat and make noise. And occasionally exchange phone numbers 
The Caja Navarra ads keep adding new people, that redhead hadn’t been there before.
Oi, today’s brand is Cebada Gago. While they’re not as famous as Miuras and Victorinos, they are the brand that’s had the highest number of wounded in the Pamplona bullruns. None in the last four years, but still. Those bulls prefer trouble to a warm, safe place, they do… they tend to be on the small side, but aggressive and smart as all get go.
One of the things in which you can see that it’s not the weekend is that most runners wear clean clothes; the immense majority the “uniform” of all-white clothes, sneakers or espadrilles and red sash and bandanna. Many of them will have gone home, maybe not to sleep, but at least to shower and change clothes.
A San Fermín venimos
por ser nuestro patrón
nos guíe en el encierro
dándonos su bendición.
There goes the rocket… and there go the bulls. A light brown one (these are called “jaboneros”, “soapy”, because you can see the whirls on their fur and it sort of looks like when someone’s short hair is wet with soap); three are black with brown backs. The oxen are usually spotted, which makes them easy to differentiate, dunnow if I’d said it before. They were very compact until the bend, where four have fallen and three had problems getting back up. Still relatively compact, though. I’ve seen a couple of bulls feinting at runners but can’t tell if they really attacked. Mid-Estafeta, all the bulls were running together with the oxen nowhere in sight. One of the bulls just sort-of-ran into one of his brothers, who has stopped for a moment startled at feeling a mouth on his asscheek, but continued running. They’ve just showed one of the Red Cross posts starting to roll up the saline and so forth; that one isn’t tending anybody and doesn’t expect to.
One piercing wound at least and I saw a couple falls that looked like they’ve hurt a lot. Red Cross Report: piercing wound on thigh, broken collarbone, two more with general hits. They’ve also explained that when the camera shows someone being loaded onto an ambulance with a neckbrace this is SOP, it doesn’t mean that there is a broken neck or hit skull, just that they prefer to carry them as bound and protected as possible until the standard CAT can be taken. They follow the same procedure for other situations when polytraumatisms are likely, for example car crashes.
It’s been a very clean year, so far! May it stay so.
More doctors’ visits upcoming, naturally, but I’m beginning to wonder if maybe I’m crazy, because I know something hurts. They must believe me, because they gave me a little percocet, but at least I know my appendix isn’t about to burst, right?
We never said that we’re rational when under the influence of adrenaline, you know!