Hemingway’s Pamplona classic turns 100, luring new bull‑run fans

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A hundred years after Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises introduced Pamplona’s running of the bulls to a global audience, the novel’s centenary is helping fuel another surge of San Fermín pilgrims to northern Spain.

A Jazz Age novel that put Pamplona on the map

First published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises turned a regional Navarrese celebration into one of Europe’s most recognizable festivals. Literary histories note that the novel’s spare prose and focus on a restless “lost generation” made it a landmark of modern American fiction while simultaneously exporting the drama of Pamplona’s encierro, or bull run, to readers far beyond Spain.

Municipal and tourism materials from Pamplona highlight how closely the book is tied to the city’s image. The novel’s Spanish title, Fiesta, has itself become shorthand in many countries for the San Fermín week held each year from 6 to 14 July, when bulls thunder through the old town’s narrow streets each morning before evening bullfights.

The centenary has renewed interest in the locations Hemingway used. Guides in Pamplona now routinely trace the route followed by his characters, from bars and cafés in the main square to streets that line the bull run, giving visitors a sense of how a 1920s travel narrative grew into a foundational text of literary tourism.

Film adaptations and countless travel features over the decades have reinforced that link. The 1957 movie version, shot partly in Spain and Mexico, reproduced the running of the bulls on screen, fixing Pamplona’s white-and-red festival aesthetic in the popular imagination long before social media.

Centenary San Fermín draws another wave of foreign runners

This year’s San Fermín festival, which opened on July 6 with the traditional rocket launch over Pamplona’s packed city hall square, is framed by local media as a particularly symbolic edition. Coverage in Spanish and international outlets notes that the 2026 celebration coincides with the novel’s 100th anniversary and has attracted a strong turnout of foreign visitors despite concerns about crowding.

In recent post-pandemic editions, municipal tallies have indicated that Pamplona, a city of around 200,000 residents, can receive more than a million visitors over nine days, with foreigners making up roughly 15 percent of the crowd. Among runners entering the cordoned streets for the encierro, reports indicate that Americans have become the largest foreign contingent, outnumbering participants from neighboring France and the United Kingdom.

Specialist tour operators report increased demand tied directly to the Hemingway milestone. Companies that package balcony views, guided runs and festival accommodation say that anniversary coverage has turned The Sun Also Rises into a de facto reading list item for first-time visitors, many of whom arrive in Pamplona clutching newly purchased copies or searching out English-language editions in local bookshops.

At the same time, safety briefings emphasize that Hemingway’s romantic depiction of daredevil runners does not fully reflect the risks on today’s crowded, camera-filled streets. Information distributed by the city and regional authorities continues to stress that only experienced runners who understand the course and rules should participate.

Following Hemingway’s footsteps through modern Pamplona

For many travelers, the centenary is less about taking part in the bull run itself and more about inhabiting the world that Hemingway sketched. Hotels and bars long associated with his visits feature prominently in guidebooks and tourism brochures, turning ordinary commercial spaces into literary landmarks.

The Gran Hotel La Perla on Pamplona’s Plaza del Castillo, where Hemingway stayed repeatedly, now markets a dedicated Hemingway suite overlooking part of the bull run route. Media reports describe shelves filled with editions of The Sun Also Rises and memorabilia linked to the author’s stays in the city.

Across the square, historic cafés that once served as meeting points for writers and toreros now attract visitors seeking to recreate scenes from the novel. Public information points out details such as original woodwork and mirrors that date back to the 1920s, connecting contemporary festival crowds with the setting that inspired Hemingway’s expatriate characters a century ago.

Even outside the bullring, reminders of the writer are hard to miss. Statues and plaques mark sites where he watched encierros and corridas, while souvenir shops sell everything from white-and-red San Fermín outfits to book-themed merchandise. For a growing number of visitors, photographing these literary touchstones is as important as sampling local pintxos or watching fireworks.

A contested legacy in a city wrestling with overtourism

The centenary has also revived debate inside Pamplona about whether the global profile that Hemingway helped create has become too much of a good thing. Commentators in regional newspapers describe a city that now negotiates the benefits of international attention with the strains of overtourism, including rising accommodation prices, crowded streets and mounting pressure on services.

Cultural critics in Spain have argued in essays and public forums that the novel both magnified and distorted the image of San Fermín, emphasizing late-night drinking and romantic intrigue at the expense of religious tradition and local everyday life. Some residents have responded with a mixture of pride and fatigue, recognizing the economic impact of visitors while questioning whether the festival is now staged more for cameras than for community.

Animal welfare groups, which have become increasingly visible around San Fermín in recent years, use the anniversary to draw attention to bullfighting’s ethical issues. Marches and performance-style protests before the first encierros criticize both the spectacle itself and the way The Sun Also Rises helped glamorize encounters between bulls and humans.

Despite these tensions, municipal cultural programs for the centenary highlight Hemingway’s broader contributions. Exhibitions, lectures and public readings focus on his relationship with Spain, his role in shaping twentieth-century prose and the way his work influenced generations of travel writing, even as the city debates how to balance heritage, tourism and animal rights.

Literary tourism keeps The Sun Also Rises in circulation

A century after its publication, The Sun Also Rises continues to function as both novel and informal guidebook. University syllabi around the world still assign the book, and many traveling readers treat Pamplona and the nearby Pyrenees as an extended classroom, combining festival visits with side trips to the fishing and hiking landscapes that appear in the story.

Bookshops in Navarra and Basque Country report steady demand for editions of Hemingway’s Spanish works in multiple languages, particularly during San Fermín week. Some stores assemble centenary tables pairing The Sun Also Rises with nonfiction titles on bullfighting, regional history and contemporary critiques, giving visitors a broader view of the culture that originally captivated the author.

Documentaries and travel programs released in recent years have further strengthened the link between the novel and the encierro, following modern runners who cite Hemingway as an early inspiration. Streaming platforms and international broadcasters have carried features that retrace his journeys from Paris to Pamplona, often framing them as origin stories for today’s global festival culture.

For Pamplona, that enduring interest is both an opportunity and a challenge. As the city marks one hundred years since a young American writer turned its summer fiesta into a symbol of freedom and excess, it continues to welcome readers who arrive seeking the atmosphere of Hemingway’s pages, even as contemporary debates reshape what San Fermín means in the twenty-first century.