Pamplona City Council hides the bull, the running of the bulls, and the bullfight in a promotional spot for the San Fermin festival.

"The official social media profiles of the festival @SanferminesPamplona are carrying out the final countdown to the Chupinazo ( The Fireworks) with the help of some of the city's most recognizable faces." This is how Pamplona City Council heads a post on its X account, in which it introduces a video featuring, indeed, "the city's most recognizable faces," who must also be the most forgetful, since in the excitement of the countdown they've forgotten the driving force behind the festival, the soul of Sanfermines : the bull, the running of the bulls, and the bullfight.

It's as curious as it is striking that none of the interventions mention the element that puts Pamplona on the world stage, the piece that made Hemingway universal. But not only that: the video illustrating the City Council post by Joseba Asiron, a Bildutarra, also avoids any contact with the bull. The crowds, the big-headed figures, the streets in turmoil, a bolt of lightning that could be from the bullpens, appear, but not a single frame of the running of the bulls, the bullfight—without a bullfight there is no running of the bulls—the Monumental de Pamplona is packed—morning and afternoon, 20,000 people per session.

There will be more announcements coming soon in which the Pamplona City Council may remember the bullfighting activity—without subsidies or charges to the public treasury, with Paganini's Casa de Misericordia—from which the city benefits so much. And it may, too, come out in all its splendor. Just maybe. There's always hope that even the most foolish will prove they're not so foolish. But it's a very fragile hope, and they'll once again try to hide the sun with a finger.