Today the sun comes up behind
schedule. On this day which is really an eve day, we cut the morning
short so that the wait may be more fleeting. Today is the 6th of
July and the 6th of July starts at an arranged time and at an arranged
place; that is to say, when the clock strikes twelve midday at the
Town Hall Square in Pamplona. Not a moment earlier nor in any other
place. What goes before is an empty silence, or that is what it
feels like. It is as if that moment and that place had wiped out
any other sense of time or space, which however, does in fact, exist.
Because before noon, the "Pamploneses" are in fact celebrating
an event - "The stride towards the rocket", when the constricted
hours can only lead them to the only square in the city on that
day. Don't look for the event in any official program, for it is
not to be found there, nor will it appear the next day in the chronicles
of events. But it is there and it exists, and it has its hours and
its own scenes and it pulsates with all the emotion of any of the
better-known events that take place during the Sanfermin fiestas.
The steps towards the rocket go up Santo Domingo street, go down
Carlos III street, cross the wide spaces of the Citadel area, turn
the corners of many streets always heading towards the Town Hall
square.
Thousands of the city's citizens move forward along the platforms,
with just the essential baggage, to catch the fiesta train. As
they stride forward firmly and silently you can hear in the silence
of their steps the tremble of the imminent jubilation that awaits
them. With their exotic attire,, their neckties and sashes, they
look like some kind of fugitives from reality, and, at the same
time, intruders on the pending fiesta. Strangers in the promised
paradise and outcasts of their own land.
Dressed as "Pamplonicas" with their classic San Fermin
outfits, they begin to fill the approaching streets that gaze
on them with amazement as they await the dawning of the day. What
are they doing, what are they murmuring, why this strange striding
step at these hours and at these places?
They seem like figures from some silent movie that has just started
up, waiting for the flare of the music to start up. Then the city
and its citizens will become recognizable again. At that precise
moment when the flare is light the striding steps will come to
a halt and a new pace will take over; the fiestas will launch
a new rhythm in a dispersed time where all that you are, you have
been before, ever since that first time.
Here, we live the fiestas at a pace,- from pace to pace, and exhausted
by a stopped clock, which however, continues to strike its hours.
The hour that strikes twelve, the hour of the early-morning music,
the hour of the procession, (which moreover has an octave) the
hour of the bull-running, the hours of the brass-bands, the hour
of the bull-fights, and even the hour for the Pobre de mí
which pulls down the curtain on everything.
Going and coming without a breather, everyone doing his own thing
which is what everyone else is doing. There is no need to tell
anyone about it, because you are born with the instinct, and we
don't even need to take decisions because the decisions are taken
for us year-in year-out to the rhythm of the fiestas. In this
city, and during these days, you stop for a moment and you will
likely be taken for one of those crazy pantomime characters that
dresses as a "Pamplonica " to aggravate the scenery.
Stepping forward to twelve o'clock, for it is time now that dawn
came up. That woman turning the corner of Mercaderes, panting
with emotion is Concha Fernandez de Pinedo, the councilor who
will set light to the rocket. Look at those three way up there,
striding purposefully forward in the distance - they are Manuel
Turrillas, Tomás Caballero and Paco Zubieta, all historical
Pamplonicas. They are going to take up their position to watch
the first fiestas that they can't celebrate here below with the
rest of us.
But they took have that special stride. They couldn't miss it.
Why would they?
|
