Getting Drunk with Hemingway

In 1923 Ernest Hemingway visited Pamplona, Spain for the first time during the July festivals of San Fermin. The whole ordeal had such an impact on him that he would return many times for more than thirty years. He would get drunk at Cafe Iruña and stay at Hotel Perla and eventually would write about a series of experiences in The Sun Also Rises. Some might say if he visited the same spot today, he would not go back. There is, in fact, a line in A Dangerous Summer, that says he will not tell the reader the location of a special place he found in the woods because he does not want to go back next summer and find 50 cars already there.

San Fermin is the running of the bulls in the mind of the world. Every once in a while you look at the news and see something about someone being gored by a bull as they crossed the "corner of death" before reaching the plaza de toros. It does really happen; 15 people have been killed since 1925, the last in 2009. It is just a bunch of drunks feeling very brave with a red scarf.

I had big plans for Pamplona, being a Hemingway fanatic myself. I had dreams of getting drunk at his bar with a drink on his stool. I knew there was a statue, so I dreamed of staring into his eyes with every sip and him staring back approvingly with a nod. I had dreams of a Spanish newspaper and a pen and paper. It was a very authentic dream.


But things a'int like they used to be, and the people at Cafe Iruña are not pleased with questions about Ernest even though he is the reason why people come and spend money. One bartender said lamely, "he came here to get drunk," so with all this I packed up and went home with my own bottle of wine. I had my own Hemingway experience alone somewhere else, and that was as good as any.

Pamplona two weeks after San Fermin was wonderfully quiet, a steady place. I came out of the Pyrenees and the Tour de France like no tomorrow, and was greeted with a hug and a kiss in Zaragoza like we were still back there on a hill in Ronda. It's a wonderful thing in life to pick up where you left off like you were there all along. I was told one night laying there in bed, a few tears coming down her face, that I am going to live the most amazing life, and that was a bittersweet thing to hear because I think she's right, but to do that I must keep moving. I ran along the Camino de Santiago, out into the yellow fields beyond Pamplona, on my final afternoon in Navarre. Pamplona has been done, discovered, and saturated, for years now really, and so off we go to discover what's next.

I remember sitting down at that little cafe in a back alleys of Granada, and on the menu it said, "Hemingway was never here." I love Hemingway, and I will read more books and enjoy the simple honest writing about what he saw, but the fact he wasn't everywhere is probably a good thing.