Hemingway's century-old 'The Sun Also Rises' still inspires Americans to
run with bulls in Pamplona
[July 06, 2026]
By JOSEPH WILSON
PAMPLONA, Spain (AP) — Bill Hillmann has been gored three times while
running with the bulls in Spain, but he wouldn’t miss this year’s San
Fermin festival for anything.
It marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Ernest Hemingway ’s
book that launched the future Nobel Laureate to literary fame and put
Pamplona on the map for millions of people around the world.
Hemingway’s 1926 novel “The Sun Also Rises” has captivated generations
of readers with its sexy Jazz Age tale of American and British bohemians
trying to fill some inner void with the distractions of exotic travel,
vast quantities of alcohol and the anguishing pursuit of impossible
love.
Its success established “The Sun Also Rises” as a cornerstone of the
American literary canon, right up there with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The
Great Gatsby.” It also popularized the term “lost generation” to
describe the tight-knit group of early 20th-century writers expatriated
in Paris. Hemingway's terse style forever changed American literature.
In Spanish, its title is translated as “Fiesta.”
Hillmann, who hails from Chicago, was 19 when Hemingway’s vivid
depiction of the bull running festival first enthralled him, especially
descriptions of average Spaniards risking their lives sprinting through
the streets to guide the bulls to the bull ring during the nine-day
festival. It kicks off with a firework blast over a packed plaza on
Monday, and the first of eight bull runs is on Tuesday.
“It was the first book I ever read,” Hillmann told The Associated Press
in Pamplona as he looked down on the pen where the bulls are held before
being set free on the cobblestoned route. “I sat there for about six
hours, well past midnight, reading the book. And by the time I was done
with that book, I was going to be a writer and I was going to be a bull
runner.”
Since that literary encounter, the 44-year-old Hillmann has run with the
bulls in Spain hundreds of times, counting both his trips to Pamplona
and his participation in dozens more bull runs in other Spanish towns.
His infatuation with Hemingway and Pamplona has never waned, even though
he nearly died one time that he was gored by a bull horn.
Hillmann’s appreciation led him to earn a doctorate in English, and now
it is his turn to teach “The Sun Also Rises” at East-West University in
Chicago, and write about bull running.
Americans are the biggest group of foreign bull runners
Hillmann is just one of many Americans inspired to travel to Spain to
see the festival firsthand. Americans are still the leading group of
foreigners who run at the San Fermin festival. In 2022, 16% of the bull
runners were Americans, the largest percentage among foreigners and four
times more than those from neighboring France, according to Pamplona’s
City Hall.
Dallas-based tour operator Bruce Anderson, whose company “Running Of The
Bulls” has helped thousands of Americans attend San Fermin over the
years, says that Hemingway’s work made the festival a bucket-list
destination. This year, his company is bringing 1,400 people to the
festival, with over two-thirds from the United States.
“There’s a lot of energy, a lot of excitement around just remembering
that book and the impact that it’s had,” said Anderson, himself a
lifelong Hemingway fan. He spoke in Pamplona’s art deco Café Iruña,
which features heavily as a drinking spot in “The Sun Also Rises” and
today houses a life-size statue of Hemingway bellying up to the bar.
And Anderson, with his thick white beard, is something of a Hemingway
look-alike. Local Spaniards often call out to him: “Papa!” – a nickname
for their adopted hero.
It is impossible to avoid Hemingway in Pamplona
Hemingway is etched into the landscape of Pamplona. Hotels and bars have
busts of him or signs up that he was once there. Outside the Pamplona
bull ring, which also has a statue of the writer, a huge banner hangs in
honor of the novel, including a quote that shows how the festival left
the writer speechless: “At noon of Sunday, the 6th of July, the fiesta
exploded. There is no other way to describe it.”
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San Fermin tour operator Bruce Anderson poses in Pamplona, northern
Spain, Thursday, July 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Miguel Oses)
 When Hemingway made his last visits
to Pamplona, he would frequent the Perla Hotel; his suite still has
furniture from the 1950s when he stayed there. The room, which
overlooks the bull run route, also has two glass book cases holding
dozens of copies of “The Sun Also Rises.”
“Hemingway did a lot for Pamplona because he made it known around
the world,” said Fernando Hualde, who worked for four decades as a
receptionist in the hotel.
Hemingway’s legacy has become complicated over time
Hemingway’s local legacy, however, is mixed.
Beside a feminist critique of his hyper masculine public persona,
Hemingway has drawn criticism from the animal rights movement for
his praise of bull fighters. In “The Sun Also Rises,” he spills far
more ink on descriptions of their bravery than on the bull runs.
Animal welfare activist Brook Spurling said during a protest against
the San Fermin bullfights that “Hemingway wrote about many, many
themes that today would not be accepted into society. He writes
about hunting, about war, and we don’t want to be appreciating these
themes today.”
Hualde says that some Pamplona residents rue his early promotion of
the festival due to the ills of overtourism the sleepy provincial
city is now experiencing.
Pamplona has 200,000 residents and receives over a million more
people for the festival. While most are Spaniards, around 15% of the
revelers are from abroad. And many, especially the younger visitors,
follow Hemingway’s example of drinking to excess.
Some locals take pride in spots that weren’t touched by Hemingway.
Local literature professor Gabriel Insausti of Pamplona’s University
of Navarra recalls being in a bar with a sign that read “Hemingway
was not here.”
“In general, Hemingway has become a product of a franchise
associated with San Fermin festival that has obscured his novel,”
Insausti said. “People know who Hemingway is, but they haven’t read
his novel.”
But the power of Hemingway’s English prose lives on
Hillmann said that the high percentage of inexperienced foreigners
today makes the Pamplona bull runs particularly dangerous. The last
death was in 2009 but gorings and other injuries are common. Novice
runners can easily panic and make a wrong move that can cause a
pileup or send someone into the path of a bull.
He was badly gored in 2014 when he said a bad maneuver by a fellow
runner left him exposed to a bull. He thought he was dying, such was
the quantity of blood gushing from his leg.
After another goring in 2017, Hillmann told the AP from his hospital
bed in Pamplona that he would not stop running. “People think this
is just crazy people running. There is real art. If you pay
attention, you can see it,” he said then.
Hemingway's granddaughter, the actress Mariel Hemingway, recalls
being treated “like royalty” when she attended San Fermin years ago.
Mariel, who has written and spoken about her grandfather as a
sufferer of mental illness that led to his suicide in 1961, is
convinced his work will endure.
That fascination with death is likewise timeless.
“Identity, love, purpose, and how to rebuild after profound loss ...
those themes haven’t ever changed. That’s what’s great about my
grandfather,” Mariel Hemingway told the AP from her home in Idaho.
“I think he captured something that will never go away.”
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