SanFermin 2

Widening its river banks, expanding its range, the roman fleuve of SanFermin 2 races on in full torrent. Change is coming to the cuadrilla. And, as Spain plunges feverishly into the modern world, change is coming to San Fermin. Mushrooming television coverage. The movies and the admen arrive. Balconies start being rented to view the bullrun. The local cartoon T shirts are on every back and marketed in every shop window. The systematic selling of the fiesta has begun.
For the habituals, the fiesta more and more immerses them in a Proustian memory palace that balances and contrasts past history and their present actions. As the cuadrilla become more deeply involved with the Navarrans of Pamplona and the pueblos, some find themselves eyewitnesses to history, swept up in the large events unfolding over the last decade and a half of the 20th century.
Israel, India, Egypt, Iran, and Africa. From the Berlin Wall to the Gulf War. Speculation in Silicon Valley. Midnight assignations in a Paris cemetery. Chasing opals and legends in Mexico. Dead men tell tales. Skeletons begin to escape their closets. Past and present coexisting, coiling upon each other as the end of the century and the new millennium loom into view.
New faces step up to join the dance. Tragedies and triumphs occur. Warriors fall. The inevitable changing of the guard. Unknown accounts of Hemingway surface. Marceliano's closes its doors. Death comes to the encierro for the first time in 15 years. The first foreigner to die. An American...