Pamplona is committed to celebrating the Sanfermines of 2022

USPA NEWS - For the second consecutive year, this July 6, Pamplona was silent. For the second consecutive year, the Town Hall square was empty and the city did not hear the sound of the Chupinazo, the rocket that starts the San Fermín festivities. For the second year in a row, Pamplona runs out of parties: COVID-19 is scarier than the bulls of the Encierros, it kills more and is more difficult to control.

The Pamplona City Council presented this July 6, an audiovisual communication campaign to tell the world what Sanfermines are. And it does so through a staircase that began on January 1, when it was not yet known what was going to happen with the festivities, as the mayor of Pamplona, Enrique Maya, explained in the presentation. It collects testimonies of people who live San Fermín from within and who narrate, from the heart, their experiences, what they do, what they feel and what the festivities mean to them.

In their interviews, accompanied by images from other years, they use terms such as global, exciting, welcoming, historical, vibrant and spontaneous, among many other ideas. And they summarize them by saying that "Sanfermines mean ... well, everything", that "there is no party anywhere in the world to equal San Fermín, it is unique!" or that "it is a brutal experience."

Present in international media

The objective of this municipal initiative is to achieve the maximum national and international diffusion of the videos so that, despite the suspension of the Sanfermines, the festivities are present in national and international media and social networks, without losing the prominence of other years. In this way, the Consistory seeks to position Pamplona in the days when the world looks at the city to remember what the essence of the festivities is and, at the same time, that the images become a tourist attraction while the 6th of July 2022.

In total, the City Council of Pamplona has edited six videos, one for each day of the stairway lived so far and which can be seen on the web 'losvivremos.es'. By way of presentation, he has produced a seventh video with the basic ideas and short cuts from the interviews, which is known as a 'trailer'. Finally, this Wednesday the recording of the step corresponding to July 7, San Fermín, will be published. The campaign has been carried out by La Llorona Comunicación and the audiovisual producer Aimar Leoz. The videos are subtitled in Basque, English and French.

Those who star in the videos, four women and five men, are of different ages and narrate how each person can have different experiences and enjoy in a thousand ways during those 9 days. They have experiences and sensations with which it will be easy for anyone who has been to Pamplona from July 6 to 14 of any year to identify.

The main characters are Isabel de Diego (January 1), Jim Hollander along with Joe Distler and Chema Esparza (February 2), Javier Aranegui (March 3), Leire Alemán and Alicia Serrano (April 4), Santi Echeverría (May 5) and Laura Azcona (June 6). Month by month, from different approaches (tradition, foreign gaze, music or hospitality, for example), they have been narrating what the city experiences each year from July 6 to 14, while the idea that for the second year there would be no festivities.

Despite the fact that the last two steps were climbed with the certainty that Sanfermines had been suspended, “the passion and love of the festivities continues to flood each frame, with the certainty that #LosVivremos and we will share again,” said the City Council in a statement. As some of the protagonists say "among the new people who are going to join who have never lived them, plus those of us who have so much desire, I think they will have to open the streets for us because we will not fit" and they will become “The best Sanfermines we have ever experienced.”

January 1 and February 2

The staircase begins with the recording of the last New Year's Eve at Isabel De Diego's house. The first step of January 1 is a reminder of the Sanfermines decades ago but in many experiences they are like those of now, with fireworks, barracks, dances, people coming from outside and desires to come home later. And a very common feeling nowadays, "my heart vibrates and it makes me like that inside, like tickles, when the young men sing three times before the confinement and they run so close to the bulls." The health crisis is present in the video in the conversation and in which Isabel participated in last year's #LosVivremos campaign.

On February 2, as was customary that month, the interview is by video call between Pamplona, Jerusalem and Paris, offering the vision of the international Sanfermines and the attractiveness of the Encierro, an act that is mentioned in several of the videos. Jim Hollander, probably the first photographer to pass photos of the Encierro through an agency to the world's newspapers, talks with his American colleague Joe Distler and with a friend from Pamplona, Chema Esparza, who is in the apartment they both have in Pamplona, while remembering that it is "a wonderful party, so open and so different."

March 3 and April 4

On March 3, hopes of celebrating the holidays are failing and the question remains of what will happen. In the video there are memories of someone who has been lucky enough to be able to throw a Chupinazo, Javier Aranegui. He tells in the first person the emotion of "that cloak of handkerchiefs and the sound impact that you received" and of his life in the rock, at parties with the desire to feel and the accumulated joy, and wanting to share with all the people who they surround you, wherever they are from.

That welcoming spirit of Pamplona continues to be transmitted on April 4, the day in which Leire Alemán and Alicia Serrano talk about the festivities and the activities that follow each other (the Comparsa de Gigantes y Cabezudos, the orchestras ...). And how the city's businesses prepare in advance to receive those who live here and those who come from other parts of the world. They bear witness to “the joy and enthusiasm with which people come. It is seeing clients so happy, how they enjoy it ”while“ you can get the satisfaction of wanting to do it well.” A step in which the chapel of San Lorenzo paid tribute to the hotel industry, businesses, along with other spaces, without which the festivities would not be understood because San Fermín is also gastronomy.

The music fills May 5 and June 6

On May 5 it was official that this year there would be no festivities because, as the campaign launched for the suspension said, "I care about you." Santi Echeverría claims that "music is part of the soul of the party." It is born in the chupinazo, continues at 8 in the morning every day in the niche and accompanies the exits of the peñas, the concerts of the Plaza de los Fueros, the targets, the exits of the Comparsa de Gigantes y Cabezudos or El Pobre de Mí. With moments in which situations make you “feel alive and you say, how good that I am here, that I am enjoying this moment and I am part of this city and this party.” He concludes, advancing that “in the Sanfermines of 2022 I believe that we are going to see more tears than in life. It is going to be indescribable, people are going to have a need for music to guide them, take them everywhere, express themselves, feel the joy, feel the emotion.”

To close the ladder, on June 6, Laura Azcona brings the vision of a younger person and an expert in social networks and for whom "San Fermín is improvisation and spontaneity in its purest form, it is an adventure!," with a party constant behind every corner. "Much more than what we see on television," each day is totally different without ever knowing how the day will pass. And all this living it three times: de facto, when you get home and see the photos and when you remember the time.