Low life | 12 July 2008 | The Spectator

I’ve not been to Pamplona’s famous week-long ‘running of the bulls’ and bullfighting fair of Saint Fermin since 2002; but every year since, on 6 July, at midday, when the town council lets off the rocket signalling the start of the festivities, I’ve felt a pang of regret that I’ve once again failed to manage my life sufficiently well to be there with the thousands who have.

I first went ten years ago, after reading Hemingway’s bullfighting encyclopedia Death in the Afternoon. After half a dozen chapters of meticulous description of the Spanish corrida, Hemingway admits that it is beyond even his powers of description to convey fully the effect on the senses of a bullfight, and challenges the reader to go to Spain and see one before reading on. It was the first week in July and Pamplona’s religious bull fair was on, so I obediently took the ferry to Santander, then a bus across northern Spain to the old Carlist bastion.