Photograph from 1924 Encierro in Pamplona

Here’s the photo that inspired the film being made about my grandfather by Sergio Oksman and Carlos Muguiro.


The photograph, as I mention in my post El Doble, was taken on the 13th of July, 1924 in Calle Estafeta in Pamplona, just a few moments before Estaban Domeño was mortally wounded, the first ever recorded death in an encierro. The man lying on the corner of the street, Pablo Guerendiain, was also wounded by one of the bulls. My grandfather would have been on the opposite side of the street, further ahead, looking down at the dying and injured runners from the balcony of his room at the Hotel La Perla.

Special thanks to Sergio Muguiro for sending me this photograph!

The passage of time

A good friend of mine from Milano, Vittorio Pisapia, read my last posting and told me that when he went to Pamplona in 2006 for the Fiesta he had two images of my grandfather in mind. The first was the one I used in “The Undefeated”, of Ernest as an old man in 1953 watching a bullfight with his wife Mary, while the second photo (below) is of a much younger and more vigorous man taken in 1927.


I told him that the fact that he had these two photographs of Ernest in mind reminded me of what I’d written in another posting “El Doble”, mirror images of the same man, distorted by time.

But Vittorio disagreed. “In my opinion it’s not quite the same thing, or better yet, there is a connection, it’s true. But while in “El Doble” you talk about the death of Pablo and of Ernest who probably was there while all of this was happening and who sees Pablo, the two photographs of Ernest speak of two different moments and of two different people, even if the person and the place are exactly the same. In between these two photos there’s an entire lifetime.”