Pamplona (EFE).- The writer Ernest Hemingway has been exempted this Thursday by Pamplona from being the cause of distorting the Sanfermines and its massification through his novel ‘Fiesta’ in a mock trial marked by humor but which has recounted with professionals from the judiciary and experts in Sanfermines issues and literature.
In this event organized by the Anaitasuna club and the Navarre Writers Association, the eternal dispute over whether Hemingway and his novel ‘Fiesta’ have been a detriment to Pamplona by attracting hordes of foreigners who have distorted their festivals or, on the contrary, has been shelved. They have been positive for the city’s economy and tourism.
The case has had all the possible guarantees in an act of this nature, with a ruling issued by the Investigating Judge No. 3 of Pamplona Mª Paz Benito, with an accusation brought by the former ombudsman and member of the Administrative Court of Navarra Javier Enériz and the defense of the criminal lawyer Pilar Gastón.
It has also had a popular jury chosen by lottery from the audience as well as expert witnesses such as the writers Miguel Izu, Fernando Hualde, Idoia Saralegui and Tim Pinks, the journalists Javier Solano and Manu Corera and the travel promoter specializing in clients Anglo-Saxons Stephanie Mutsaerts.
Based on his statements, the jury has considered that Hemingway is not guilty of causing the overcrowding of the festivities and that he did not seriously contribute to distorting the Sanfermines, but in a positive way to “spread the festivities throughout the world and the development of tourism in the city”.
Despite this, the verdict did have enough of a majority to establish that the image he offered of the city in his novel is “ridiculous and offensive.”
Based on this verdict, the judge has considered that “it is only possible to issue an acquittal and declare him not guilty of the charges”, a sentence that, despite the prosecutor’s complaints, the judge has established that it is “firm because it cannot be resource”.
Due to these facts, the prosecution requested for the defendant a change in the title of his work to “Do not go to Pamplona and leave its people”, the removal of his statue from the surroundings of the Plaza de Toros, that the public media not speak good of him and that “every vestige in the streets be erased” remaining alone in the history of literature in the United States.
diversity of opinions
In his statement, Javier Solano, the historical narrator of the running of the bulls on TVE and who has attributed the fame of the Sanfermines to television in the first place, considered that Hemingway did “nothing different” from what the Navarrese do.
Miguel Izu, author of the book “Hemingway in the Sanfermines”, has defended that the writer “integrated perfectly” and has considered it “exaggerated” to blame only him for the avalanche of foreigners, also considering that those who come for having read ‘Fiesta’ are tourists “with quite a good cultural and economic level”, that tourist who “creates few problems and leaves money”.
For Tim Pinks, an Englishman in love with Pamplona and its fiestas, San Fermín would not be the same without Hemingway but he has considered that this change has not been for the worse, he has clarified that bad behaviors are also carried out by foreigners and he has excused the machismo of the writer, recalling that ‘Fiesta’ was written in the 20s and that was the way of thinking back then.
In this sense, Stephanie Mutsaerts has recognized that the writer “in his own life has been a person who has wanted to show himself as someone legendaryly macho”, but in his opinion a certain advance is observed in the writer, situating Novel in “that environment of Paris where there are writers and writers” representing “women who want to seek freedom.”
For some, guilty
Fernando Hualde has agreed that Hemingway has popularized parties and “makes more people come, some better and others worse” while clarifying that in his novel he does not describe events such as peeing in the street or jumping from the fountain Navarrería, “only the bullfights, the running of the bulls and the procession merged with the vespers”.
Along the same lines, Manu Corera has defended that Hemingway is guilty “of the fact that many people come but not of how they behave” and for him what he conveys in this book is that “in the rest of the world you witness” the parties but ” In Pamplona you are the protagonist” and you can go and experience it as one of the others.
More critical has been the opinion of Idoia Saralegui for whom the writer “had a great influence on San Fermín” and “many more people come because he put it in his book” making the festival “much more common and less individual in Pamplona”.