Countdown for "Chupinazo" in Pamplona/Iruña to welcome San Fermin

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Chupinazo in 2007. Photo: EFE.

The traditional "chupinazo" firecracker will welcome the festival of San Fermin in a few hours. The city of Iruña/Pamplona is ready. The "chupinazo" officially begins the San Fermin festival, popularized internationally by Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel "The Sun Also Rises". "Los San Fermines", held since 1591, attracts tens of thousands of foreign visitors each year for nine days of revelry, morning bull-runs and afternoon bullfights.

The festival of San Fermin is mainly celebrated in the streets of the city and because of this, around 2,000 different security forces will be working these days.

Health care services will also be tightened between 6th and 14th of July to treat all emergencies, paying special attention to bull-runs.

The traditional "chupinazo" firecracker will be launched by Basque nationalist coalition Nafarroa Bai’s deputy and councilwoman Uxue Barkos. Members of Peta (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals) and Anima Naturalis organizations gathered yesterday to denounce the running of the Bulls in San Fermin.