When technology is able to put into circulation thousands of videos and images per secondit is even more fascinating to contemplate that black and white snapshot that was captured in Pamplona 100 years ago and who has been able to resist with dignity the passage of decades and misfortunes.
The photograph was collected in the local press of the time as a reminder of a dangerous and original experience of these festivals, but what no one could have imagined was that it would become the first image of the Sanfermines that would transcend the borders of this city, the first to go viral, only a century in advance.
The snapshot is assigned to Juanito Miquelez. He was captured during the running of the bulls on July 10, 1922 and one appears fallen runner at the end of rue Mercaderes. It is observed that the see who was leading the pack He fixed his attention on the boy. Fortunately for him, the morlaco he did not hit or take damage from the rest of the herd, which passed away from the Plaza de Toros, which that year changed to its current location.
The boy in question was called José María García-Mina and his son, of the same name, keep this picture framed and keeps preserved in his memory some anecdotes of these bullfights at the beginning of the last century, when in the streets of Pamplona only a brave few ran ahead of the bullsmostly belonging to the guild of butchers
The son of this runner is 93 years old and in enviable health. He goes to the Plaza del Castillo with his grandson, Daniel Ramírez García-Mina, writer and journalist based in Madrid, who investigated everything related to this image of his defenseless great-grandfather in front of the herd at full speed.
“The running of the bulls took place at six in the morning. There were hardly any runners and a few spectators on the balconies along the course. It was the background of the running of the bulls that we have today, only now they are very crowded, ”commented the writer.
“A Bad Day”
José María García-Mina remembers of his father the great fondness he had for bullfighting and that that morning in front of the sees was not in his best shape. “Apparently it happened. 15 or 20 days with gastritis, based on milk. He blamed that, that he was weak.”
To commemorate the centenary of this image, grandfather and grandson accepted the invitation of this newspaper to go to the exact place where it was taken. That day, it was hot and there was a lot of noise. Pamplona has changed, but Calle Mercaderes remains almost the same, except for the businesses that existed then that have given way to other commercial enterprises.
“He was 31 years old and he told me that he had heard the bull snort from very close, that he had almost touched it. Although in the image it seems that the danger comes from the first bull, he told me that the second had come even closer to him. It’s hard to tell if he just fell or got back up.”
José María García-Mina retains at home a large format reproduction of the photograph and assures with a certain pride that since its publication it has acquired a certain public notoriety. Years later, a famous bakery of the time, located in what is now the Chapitela, made a marzipan cake recreating the image of the runner who fell in front of the herd.
Your photo, in a bar in Germany
The real surprise for the protagonist came years later, when a trip to Germany to buy machinery for the Compañía Navarra de Abonos Químicos, of which he was director. In a bar, possibly in the city of Düsseldorf, he found the reproduction of the photograph with him as the protagonist. “There, in a bar where the photos were displayed under glass, we saw it. Imagine how it happened, “recalls his son.
However, it was not the first time that this image It crossed borders and became international. The photo appeared in an article signed by a young journalist from a Canadian newspaper, the Toronto Star, who arrived in Pamplona in 1923 in search of good material for his reporting.
It was about Ernest Hemingway, that he had set up as a correspondent in Paris a year earlier and that we do not know how and why he appeared in Pamplona. In the report he wrote in October 1923 for Canada readers on the sanfermines decided to include the image of the young man who fell on rue Mercaderes with a photo of the Plaza de Toros full of people and some vignettes on the running of the bulls.
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