The candlelit crowd that fills the Plaza Consistorial at midnight on July 14 looks like it has been gathering there forever. It has not. The Pobre de Mí, the ceremony that closes the fiestas of San Fermín, began in the 1920s as a mock funeral procession staged by a Pamplona painter and his friends, its original lyric complained that the fiesta had passed “without fun,” and the Ayuntamiento of Pamplona only adopted it as the city’s formal closing act in 1968. The solemn tradition everyone films is younger than most of the people singing it think.
That matters because the standard telling flattens the most Pamplonan thing about the ceremony: it was not designed by anyone in authority. Nearly every ritual visitors treat as eternal in this fiesta was improvised by ordinary cuadrillas and only later absorbed by the institution, and the Pobre de Mí is the clearest example of the pattern. Miss that and you miss what the midnight crowd is actually reenacting, which is a joke that outgrew its inventors.
This article draws on the festival’s own reference site sanfermin.com, on reporting in the Spanish press including El Independiente and Telecinco, and on the terminology and festival documentation this project maintains for its own contributors. Where the historical record hedges, this article hedges with it.
What Actually Happens at Midnight on July 14
The Pobre de Mí ceremony takes place in front of the Casa Consistorial in the Plaza Consistorial, the same square where the txupinazo rocket (chupinazo in the Spanish spelling) opened the fiesta at noon on July 6. At midnight the mayor appears on the balcony, declares the fiestas of San Fermín ended, and urges the crowd to return the following July. The square answers with the song: “Pobre de mí, pobre de mí, que se han acabado las fiestas de San Fermín.” Poor me, poor me, the fiestas of San Fermín have ended.
The custom is to attend with a lighted candle, and most people have the sense to carry it inside a plastic cup, both for the wind and for the wax. Rockets are fired to mark the close. Then comes the gesture that carries the most weight: the red pañuelo, tied on at the txupinazo and worn for eight and a half days straight, comes off. Between verses of mourning the same crowd shouts “¡Ya falta menos!”, meaning there is already less time to wait until next year, which tells you everything about how seriously Pamplona takes its own grief.
Unlike the txupinazo, the closing act is not a crush. Families bring children. The peñas, by long habit, hold their own parallel farewell in the Plaza del Castillo rather than in front of the town hall, singing themselves out of the fiesta on their own terms.
A Painter’s Mock Funeral: Where the Ritual Comes From
The account most often given in the Spanish press traces the ritual to the 1920s and to a Pamplona painter named Julián Valencia. On the final night of the fiesta, Valencia and his cuadrilla took to Calle San Sebastián carrying lit candles, walking in double file in a deliberate parody of a mourning procession. It was theater: a funeral for the fiesta itself, staged by friends who did not want it to end.
Their lyric was not the one sung today. The early version ran “Pobre de mí, pobre de mí, que se han pasado las fiestas sin divertir”, poor me, poor me, the fiestas have gone by without any fun. It was a grumble set to music. Over the following decades the complaint softened into the modern line about the fiestas simply having ended, which is less funny and more elegiac, a fair summary of what happened to the ritual as a whole as it grew from a cuadrilla’s joke into the emotional climax of the entire festival.
El Independiente, which published one of the more careful accounts of the song’s origin, is honest about the limits of the record: the attribution to Valencia is the version “many” give, not a documented certainty. This article keeps that hedge. What is not in doubt is that the ritual came up from the street, decades before the city touched it.
A Song With No Author, Adopted by the City in 1968
Musicologists consulted in the Spanish press describe the Pobre de Mí song the same way they describe Uno de Enero and the runners’ prayer chant: someone put words to a melody that was already circulating, and the result stuck. No composer’s name survives. Like the fiesta’s other anthems it is fruto del pueblo, a product of the people, and its single line needs no songbook.
The cántico only became a mass phenomenon in the 1960s, and in 1968 the Ayuntamiento formalized what the street had already decided, organizing the gathering of peñas and public before the town hall balcony as the fiesta’s formal close. Both El Independiente and Telecinco date the institutionalization to that year. This is the detail the English language coverage never carries, and it reframes the whole ceremony: the city did not create a tradition and hand it down, it surrendered to one that was already forty years old.
The result is an exact mirror of the opening. The fiesta begins and ends at the same balcony of the Plaza Consistorial, once with a rocket at noon and once with candles at midnight, and both ceremonies were popular inventions before they were municipal ones.
July 14 Is a Chain of Farewells, Not One Ceremony
The midnight act is only the last link in a full day of goodbyes. In the morning the Comparsa de Gigantes y Cabezudos dances its farewell, the annual despedida in which the giants of Pamplona retire for the year in front of crowds of children. In the evening the peñas stage their own farewell at the bullring, marching out with their bands and banners. By the time the square fills with candles, Pamplona has already been saying goodbye for twelve hours.
And after midnight there is one more rite, new enough that it has no formal name. Many people walk from the Plaza Consistorial to the Iglesia de San Lorenzo on Calle Mayor, home of the Capilla de San Fermín and the saint’s image, and tie their pañuelo to the church gates, leaving their candles at the railings. The festival’s own site records that the authorities have taken a dim view of it, and that the parish priest protested in the local press about the carpet of candle grease when the custom first appeared. It keeps growing anyway, which is exactly how the Pobre de Mí itself started a century ago: an unauthorized gesture, repeated until it became the tradition. The full story of what the red neckerchief means, and why it goes on and comes off when it does, is told in this site’s history of the pañuelo rojo.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Pobre de Mí mean?
Pobre de Mí translates as “poor me.” It is the one line song sung at midnight on July 14 in Pamplona’s Plaza Consistorial to close the fiestas of San Fermín: “Pobre de mí, pobre de mí, que se han acabado las fiestas de San Fermín”, poor me, poor me, the fiestas of San Fermín have ended. The name refers to both the song and the closing ceremony as a whole.
What time is the Pobre de Mí ceremony in Pamplona?
Midnight on the night of July 14, in front of the town hall in the Plaza Consistorial. The mayor appears on the balcony to declare the fiesta closed, the crowd sings with lit candles, and rockets mark the end. Arrive before midnight to be inside the square. It is far less crowded than the txupinazo and children can attend comfortably.
What do you do with your pañuelo after San Fermín ends?
Tradition says the red pañuelo comes off at the Pobre de Mí, having been worn since the txupinazo on July 6. In recent years many people then carry it to the Iglesia de San Lorenzo, where the image of San Fermín is kept, and tie it to the church gates along with their candles. That rite is popular but has never been formally embraced by the authorities. Most people simply take the pañuelo home and keep it for next year.
Who wrote the Pobre de Mí song?
Nobody knows, and that is the documented answer rather than a gap in research. Musicologists describe it as a folk creation: words set to a melody already in circulation, with no attributable composer. The ritual it belongs to is most often traced to the painter Julián Valencia and his friends, who staged candlelit mock funeral processions on Calle San Sebastián in the 1920s singing an earlier version of the lyric. The Ayuntamiento adopted the ceremony as the fiesta’s formal close in 1968.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.