100 years since Ernest Hemingway first visited Pamplona: The writer’s connection to the running of the bulls

Ernest Hemingway is well known for his love of Spain. Several works penned by the writer focus on the warm, hardy peninsular including perhaps his most famous novel, The Sun Also Rises. This book focuses on his time in France and Spain in the 1920s, though real people have had their roles switched with characters, with Jake Barnes filling in for the author.

A section of the book focuses on the Spanish tradition of bull fighting, and the Navarrese tradition of Sanfermines, or the running of the bulls. In this uniquely Basque tradition, members of the public attempt to run from six bulls down a half-mile stretch of street. Hemingway played a huge role, through his novel and his reports, in bringing the tradition to the English-speaking world.

Hemingway himself took part in amateur bullfighting in the Plaza de Toros in Pamplona. The festival still takes place annually, though it was cancelled in 2020 and 2021 due to the covid-19 pandemic. It returned last year.

Hemingway, Spain, and the 1930s

The Sun Also Rises was not Hemingway’s only novel about Spain; he also wrote multiple novels, a play, a documentary and a number of short fiction stories. Perhaps his most famous from these was the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, based upon his experience in the Spanish Civil War. This was a conflict from 1936 to 1939 in which a failed coup by facsists and the military devolved into a gruelling four year conflict. Thousands of international volunteers supported the legitimate Republican government.

The war became a hub for intellectuals and journalists from around the world. English author George Orwell, best known for the dystopian novel 1984 fought for the Republic and wrote the novel Homage to Catalonia describing his actions in the war. Hemingway himself worked for the North American Newspaper Alliance for a few years during the war.