San Fermín 1960: The Running of the Bulls

· Founder of Encierro, veteran bull runner

Looking Back at 1960

Dennis Clancey · Founder, Encierro

Looking back at 1960, it is clear that the fiesta was at a turning point that few living through it could have fully recognised. The encierros were still running at seven in the morning, a start time that would not shift to eight until 1974.

Ernest Hemingway was still alive in 1960. ‘The Sun Also Rises’ had been in print for thirty-four years by then, and its effect on the fiesta was already structural, not incidental. Visitors were arriving, drawn by a novel written by a man who had first come to the city in the 1920s. Spain itself was in a different moment too, the stabilisation plan of 1959 having opened the country to foreign investment and tourism in ways that were only beginning to show. The Feria del Toro had held its first edition in 1959. What was happening in 1960 was not yet visible as history, but it was history being made.

Looking back, 1960 also marked the year Pamplona signed its twinning agreement with Bayonne, a gesture toward a broader European identity that matched the outward turn the fiesta was already making in practice.

Dennis Clancey, Founder, Encierro

A Festival Opening to the World

The 1960 fiesta opened on July 6 with the traditional chupinazo and ran through July 14. The runs took place at 7 a.m., the start time that had been in place since 1924, more than a decade before it would be moved to 8 a.m. in 1974. The fiesta was operating in an atmosphere shaped by Spain’s early ‘desarrollismo’ phase, the economic opening that followed the stabilisation plan of 1959.

In 1960, the encierro ran at seven in the morning, Pamplona was twinned with Bayonne, and Hemingway was still alive. The fiesta was becoming something it had never quite been before.

Every 1960 Encierro, Day by Day

The route runs 848.6 metres from Santo Domingo to the bull ring.

Official Poster of San Fermín 1960

Cartel 1960 by Martín Balda.

The 1960 Encierro on Film

Archival footage of the 1960 encierros.

Sources

Every fact on this page is checked against these sources. Where sources disagreed, the one closest to the day won.

• Ayuntamiento de Pamplona, "Pamplona celebra el Día de Bayona y de las ciudades hermanas con un acto de bienvenida a la representación de Bayona", 2018-07-09. pamplona.es
• El Encierro (magazine) n56, via Dialnet, "Arquitecturas alrededor del encierro (Javier Torrens Alzu)", 2020-06. dialnet.unirioja.es
• Universidad de Jaén repository (Alba Pulido Juárez), "El Plan de Estabilización de 1959", 2021-01-26. crea.ujaen.es
• Ayuntamiento de Pamplona, "Pamplona recordará a los 16 fallecidos en la historia del encierro con adoquines", 2023-12-27. pamplona.es
• Ayuntamiento de Pamplona, "The Encierro (Bullrun)". pamplona.es
• Feria del Toro (Casa de Misericordia, official), "Historia de la Feria". feriadeltoro.com
• Ayuntamiento de Pamplona, "Carteles de San Fermín (cartel archive)". pamplona.es
• Nobel Prize (nobelprize.org), "Ernest Hemingway, Biographical". nobelprize.org
• Ayuntamiento de Pamplona, "Hemingway route". pamplona.es
• Diario de Navarra, "page 1", 13 July 1960. hemerotecadigital.bne.es
• Diario de Navarra, "page 1", 14 July 1960. hemerotecadigital.bne.es

San Fermín 1961 →