The running of the bulls

Famous all over the world, the running of the bulls is the most remarkable event of the Sanfermines and the event that made Pamplona/Iruña famous world-wide.

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Running of the bulls. Photo: EFE

At the end of the XVIIth century in Pamplona/Iruña, the bulls that were going to be fought at the bull ring got in the city helped by oxen and cowboys, going through the streets of the city until they got to the Castle Square, which was then used as a bullring.

The young lads got used to jumping into the route to see the bulls to the corrals. Although people got fond of this very fast, it was not legal until 1876, when the Festivities Committee approved it for good. The run ended already in the new bullring.

Nowadays, a few minutes before the running of the bulls starts, at eight o'clock each morning from the 7th to the 14th of July inclusive, runners gather before the image of Saint Fermin, placed in a niche on the wall at the Santo Domingo downhill Street, and sing the Saint a homily.

Runners sing three times the same song: "A San Fermin pedimos por ser nuestro patron, nos guie en el encierro, dandonos su bendicion. ¡Viva San Fermin! ¡Gora San Fermin!" ("We ask San Fermín, as our Patron, to guide us through the Bull Run and give us his blessing. Long live Saint Fermin!")

When the clock of Saint Cermin Church strikes 8 am, the man in charge of the farmyard lights the firecracker known as the chupinazo and the running of the bulls starts. The moment of the truth...

The length of the run is some 815 metres. The run lasts for three minutes and a half on average.

A good runner should start off slowly when the bulls are neither too far nor too near and run like devil before they get too close. It is a tradition to run with a rolled newspaper in the hand, in order to keep the distance with the bull and to make your way through the other runners. The runner should run for a few seconds near the bull and get out of the route as cleanly as possible.

Once the runners are at the bullring, they disperse in a fan way and the bulls are led to the bullpens. When all the bulls are already inside the bullring another rocket goes off to tell the runners about it. A third rocket means that all the bulls are already in their bullpens and ends the run.

Donostia-San Sebastian: Taking a stroll

The heart of the capital is the fairly recently pedestrianised Parte Vieja, a succession of shops, bars and restaurants where locals and visitors of all classes, ages and styles rub elbows.

Donostia-San Sebastian beach and harbour. Photo: EFE

The Parte Vieja has three buildings of historical interest: San Vicente church, a solid 16th century Gothic construction; the San Telmo Museum, a one-time Dominican convent now undergoing renovation; and the basilica of Santa María del Coro.

This area is likewise home of the remodelled Mercado de La Bretxa and the Plaza de la Constitución. The shelter of the harbour is shared by fishing and leisure vessels alike. Following the quay round to the end past a series of typical restaurants will bring us out at the Aquarium. The panoramic glass-covered tunnel running beneath the oceanarium is the most outstanding feature of a visit full of surprises.

Taking a stroll is one of the favourite local pastimes, and helps visitors to fully enjoy the city. Those wanting to go a bit further can follow the coastline via the over 7 km of maritime promenade without having to cross one single road. The two most classical stretches of this walk are the Paseo Nuevo and the Paseo de La Concha.

The former makes its way round Mount Urgull, and offers its most spectacular image during the September and October storms, when the waves come high over the sea wall. The peculiar tamarind trees, although correctly named tamarisk, and the classic railing lining the promenade are the most characteristic features of the Paseo de La Concha, which continues as far as the gardens and Paseo de Ondarreta. This promenade is rounded off with Eduardo Chillida’s Peine de los Vientos(The Windcomb) sculpture.

At the point where these two promenades meet, standing in beautiful gardens, is the English style Palacio de Miramar commissioned by Queen María Cristina. The Palacio de Aiete and Cristina-Enea Park are other breaths of fresh air. Passersby can also decide to follow the river Urumea, stroll around the centre’s pedestrian precincts with their many shops, the Plaza de Gipuzkoa or the renovated Boulevard, standing between the Parte Vieja and the new centre of this refined, moderate and cosmopolitan city.

Typical Basque sports

Basque farmers have always relied on domestic animals to carry out their farm jobs. These days they are the main characters in the animal trials which are so famous in our land.

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Stone-lifting is a typical Basque sporting show of strength. Photo: EITB

Traditional Basque sports and games are closely linked to the everyday work which the local people turned into amusing pastimes and on which fierce bets were placed between neighbours.

Individuals or teams measure their skill at specific farm or dockside work by competing to see who can cut more grass, chop more trunks or row faster; demonstrate their famed strength by lifting heavy stones, racing while carrying weights or participating in tug-of-war competitions.

They also show off their animals' strength or training through the pulling of enormous blocks of stone by oxen, ram fights and sheepdog competitions.

Sheepdog trials

The origin of sheepdog trials lies in the importance of shepherding among the Basques. These dogs basically have to demonstrate obedience, herd flocks of sheep into a fold and back again to where they started. They gain points for such obedience, for the way in which they follow the orders of the shepherd and for taking the sheep round the course without biting or barking at them.

Idi probak (The dragging of blocks of stone by oxen)

Most of our farmhouses are particularly proud of their oxen and challenges between their owners in our town squares were common. The weight of the stone varies between 1,000 and 4,500 kilos, although it is not uncommon for them to weigh over 5,000 kilos.

Nowadays, however, these competitions are usually carried out with smaller stones making the event faster and more spectacular, without the short pulls involved in the dragging of heavier blocks. The surface on which the competition takes place is cobbled. The length of the course varies from 22 to 28 metres. The trial consists of dragging the block of stone once up and once down the area in question in the shortest possible time.

New Basque pelota court to be opened in Philippines

The team will be made up of 34 Basque pelota players and will be called Sport Valey Jai Alai. It will be open on May 1st.

Photo. www.euskalkultura.com

Basque company Meridian Corporation, presided by Aitor Totoricagüena Arana, Pedro Totoricagüena Arana and Mikel Plaza, will open a new court for Basque pelota on May 1st in the Philippines called Sport Valey Jai-Alai and will be situated at Santa Ana Cagayan Valley, in the Northeast of the island.

The enclosure will be located fifty meters far from the beach, next to a superb resort, and the team will be made up of 34 Basque pelota players, ten of them Basque. The complex will be able to hold up to four thousand people and the court will be nearly of 52 meters.

Aitor Totoricagüena is very glad about the development of the events because after so many years of work and uncertainty, his dream is about to come true.

In this sense he pointed out the great importance of opening this pelota court in a time when many pelota courts have been closed, and in a place considered as Special Economic Zone and Freeport in constant growth.

Two Basque French restaurants enter list of establishments awarded Michelin stars

The famous culinary guide's list of top 100 favours the Basque country, though with some reticence from the resident chefs.

Auberge Basque Iparralde: Photo: EFE

The Michelin Guide, the prestigious guide to exceptional restaurants, has published its 100th edition on restaurants in France. The new list of top restaurants was read by François Mespléde, director of the guides, in Le Bristol restaurant ran by Eric Fréchon.

Surprisingly, the chef of one of the list's newest additions, the Auberge Basque in Saint-Pée-sur-Nivelle, was somewhat less than delighted with the decision to award them one Michelin star, as he felt it conflicted with his vision for the restaurant. Cédric Béchade's aim is to serve good, reasonably-priced food to a local market in an informal environment. Other newcomer, Les Rosier in Biarritz, shares a similar outlook. Both chefs have expressed an intention to continue in the same vane and avoid becoming elitist establishments.

There are various restaurants in Ipar Euskal Herria (northern Basque country) with one Michelin star and just one which has two: Fermin Arrambide's hotel-restaurant Les Pyrénées in St Jean Pied de Port. The number of restaurants with 3 stars remains at 26, with just one new entry in this section: Le Bristol restaurant, better known as "Sarcozy´s canteen", given the regularity with which the French president frequents it, and which played host to this year's unveiling.

Director of the guides, François Mespléde, declared this year's list to be a reflection of the latest tendency in French culinary trends: small establishments which favour local products.

Exhibition at Guggenheim Museum:Video as an art form

Installations: Selections from the Guggenheim Collections analyzes the audiovisual medium through seven essential works to understand this expressive form of contemporary art.

I-Be Area. Photo: Guggenheim Museum

Following the 2008 exhibition Installations: Selections from the Guggenheim Collections, this presentation investigates the ways in which contemporary artists have used video to create sites of immersion and discovery.

The seven works in the exhibition have been acquired by the Guggenheim during the past five years, attesting to the museum's ongoing commitment to this vital field of contemporary art, all works. The exhibition will be opened until January 10th, 2010.

From its first uses in the late 1960s, video has played an important role in artists' explorations of self and society, providing a unique means of harnessing real time and space that has become increasingly sophisticated as technologies have advanced over the decades.

These installations offer a glimpse of the diverse range of themes and styles that occupy artists working with video today. In Zidane, a 21st century portrait (2006), Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno create a cinematic portrayal of soccer player Zinedine Zidane in real time over the course of a single match.

Slater Bradley's The Doppelganger Trilogy (2001-04) also focuses on icons of popular culture, conjuring the ghostly presence of musicians Kurt Cobain, Ian Curtis, and Michael Jackson through the distancing lens of desire and memory.

Ryan Trecartin's feature-length video I-Be Area (2007) offers an entirely different take on the role of media icons in contemporary culture, looking to the internet, where new identities and communities can be constructed virtually, propelling even the most common of us into a self-made spotlight.

Mika Rottenberg, too, invents a sort of virtual reality in Dough (2006), creating an absurdist assembly line in which a cast of characters -including a woman grotesquely overweight and another who is eerily thin- mold and package raw dough. The function of fantasy that is implicitly referenced in Trecartin's and Rottenberg's works is brought to the fore in Cao Fei's video Whose Utopia (2006). This semi-documentary plumbs the realities of daily life at a massive Chinese light bulb factory, portraying the grinding monotony of its machinelike labor while also giving voice to the fantasies of its workers, who dance and play music amidst the factory spaces as if in a dream.

Isaac Julien's Paradise Omeros (2002) extends this dreamlike ambience, employing a richly imagined, elliptical narrative to explore the social, political, and emotional terrain of postcolonialism. Finally, in Link (1995-2000), Mariko Mori transports the audience to a space of contemplation through a 360-degree, four-channel video projection that documents a series of performances in major cities and archeological sites around the world. In each location, the artist lies dormant in her signature "body capsule." These acts, when witnessed together in the installation, unify the various sites across boundaries of time and place, aiming to create a transcendent, utopian space.

Bilbao Fine Arts Museum holds "Novecento and Avant-Garde"

Bilbao Fine Arts Museum presents The "Novecento and the Early Avant-garde" exhibition until May 24th.

The "Novecento and the Early Avant-garde" now presents 149 works from the early 20th-century, in a selection of paintings, sculptures, exhibition posters and photographs by professor Eugenio Carmona.

The "Novecento and the Early Avant-garde" now presents 149 works from the early 20t--century, in a selection of paintings, sculptures, exhibition posters and photographs by professor Eugenio Carmona.

The early decades of the last century were crucial to developments in contemporary Spanish art, which is so well represented in the Museum collection.

At the beginning of the century, the idea of the modern covered a broad spectrum of sensibilities, ranging from what was known as novecentismo (the novecento, i.e. the nineteen hundreds), which sought to create a refined art, almost classical in its restraint, to the avant-garde, most often identified with Cubism and Futurism.

At the same time, the legacy of Symbolism and Impressionism continued to influence artists. In this context, a number of Basque artists tried to redefine the sense of local identity and the vernacular.

Joaquin Torres Garcia, Joaquim Sunyer, Aurelio Arteta, Daniel Vazquez Diaz, Julian de Tellaeche, Antonio de Guezala, Celso Lagar, Gabriel Garcia Maroto and Jose Maria de Ucelay are some of the leading artists represented here.