The square roared like a living thing.
It was only just after sunrise, and already Plaza del Ayuntamiento pulsed with music, sweat, and drums that beat like a second heart. White shirts glowed in the rising light. Red scarves waved like flags in a sea of bodies. And in the middle of it all stood a boy—eight years old, small for his age, eyes wide enough to hold the whole city.
His name was Martín. He clutched his father’s hand tightly, his knuckles pale against the man’s weathered skin. This was his first San Fermín.
He wore the uniform of the festival—a pressed white shirt, red pañuelo tied carefully around his neck, a red sash at his waist that slipped no matter how often his mother fixed it. His sandals were too new, and his heart beat too fast.
The square smelled of beer, sunblock, and old cobblestone. It buzzed with laughter and shouts, chants rising and breaking like waves. Martín didn’t understand all the words, but he felt them in his chest. He looked up at the buildings—the flags draped from balconies, the people leaning from windows, cameras flashing, hands clapping. Everyone was watching something.
Then it came—the chupinazo.
A flare shot up, a single arc of fire and smoke, and the crowd erupted.
Martín flinched at the sound, but his father only squeezed his hand and smiled. “It’s begun,” he said.
Confetti fell like ash. Beer sprayed like rain. Grown men jumped in circles. A stranger slapped Martín on the back and shouted something jubilant, half-drunken, and loving. And for a moment, the boy laughed too—small, unsure, but real.
He didn’t run with the bulls. Not yet. That was for men and fools, his mother said. But standing there, between the chaos and the church bells, Martín felt something shift. He saw it in his father’s eyes, and in the faces of the strangers around him: this was not just a party. It was memory being made.
He would remember the colors. The sound. The way the sun caught the red scarf of a man dancing barefoot across the square. The smell of the bakery where they would go afterward. The way the city—old and wild and full of stories—wrapped itself around him like a drumbeat in his blood.
He was only a boy.
But in that square, during San Fermín,
he felt older than the moment.
And somewhere inside him,
a runner was waking up.