Spanish views from a small town

Uno de enero, dos de febrero, tres de marzo, cuatro de abril, cinco de mayo, seis de junio, siete de julio, San Fermín. Thus begins one of the most beloved songs of the town of Pamplona, in Navarra. San Fermín has put the town in the international spotlight for hundreds of years. Few people now know anything about the saint, and think they know everything about his celebration.  It began, as so many festivals have done across this land, as a cattle fair, way back in the fourteenth century. The religious celebration was changed from October to July to join with the cattle fair a couple of hundred years later. There are two versions to Fermín's martyrdom. One is that he was beheaded in Amiens in 303 A.D. The other is that he was dragged through the streets with a bunch of angry bulls running after him and goring him. Anything will do to Christianize an originally pagan tradition. Most likely, running before the bulls came from the same area as bullfighting, in the Eastern ...