Pamplona and South, Spain July 1978

I’m not sure why I was there really. I had no desire to see a bull fight, but I was en route from the Basque city of San Sebastian to Madrid by train. I was alone because Carmen Gloria, my Chilean feminist revolutionary friend, was supposed to come with me, but a few weeks before, her ex-husband had refused to take her kids. So, there I was alone, on a 3 month trip that turned out to be one of the great adventures of my life.

Pamplona was in a the Let’s Go travel book and it was the time of the Running of the Bulls, so I decided to stop there and check it out. I arrived mid-morning and walked around the city. I remember walking uphill, seeing families picnicking and I ate a tasty Spanish lunch, probably with red wine, in a restaurant. But as the afternoon wore on, there were more and more drunk men shouting and careening through the streets. I didn’t run into any bulls; nor did I want to.

Finally, I decided “I’m out of here”, or whatever the expression was at the time, and I went down a long hill to the train station and bought a train ticket for the night train to Madrid.

Just as the train was pulling out, I saw masses of people suddenly running down the hill towards the station, but my train pulled away before they crowded into the station. I wondered if the bulls had gotten loose and were chasing the onlookers as well as the macho guys that baited them.

It was a train trip that will always stay in my memory. I observed families interacting and a pony-tailed man, who got out at each stop and talked to railway workers beside the track. He struck me as a union guy. At 3 or 4 a.m., I ended up sitting with a man about my age from Nicaragua, who was in exile. This was just months before the Sandanista Revolution. He told me about the state of struggles there and how he planned to go back.

What I remember most, I don’t have a picture of. The train was crossing a plain and as night gradually receded, suddenly the tiniest part of the sun’s arc poked over the horizon, bright red. I watched the sun rise until it was a full round red burning ball balanced on the edge of the plain, threatening a 40 degree day.

When we pulled into the station in Madrid at about 7 a.m., I saw freshly pasted up posters denouncing the murders in Pamplona the evening before. There had been a Basque separatist demonstration and the police had shot 3 people moments before our train left.

The Nicaraguan and I were supposed to meet at some place after we’d slept at our respective hotels. But we didn’t meet. I can’t even remember if it were him or me that didn’t turn up. I wonder in passing if he went back to Nicaragua and joined the fighting.