BULLY FOR THEM!

Pamplona beckons as the San Fermin festival is poised to start

By Alex Trelinski

THE famous San Fermin ‘bull running’ festival is about to kick off with the ‘Chupinazo’ inaugural firing of a rocket.

People from all across the world will flock to the historic city of Pamplona for the July 7 to July 14 event.

While the running of the bulls and associated bullfights are the most high-profile events, there is much more to the festival than that.

Bonus success

SPAIN'S Youth Cultural Bonus for 2022, which provides €400 per head to invest in culture to young people who reach 18 years, has distributed more than €37.5 million since it started being issued last October.

The city council organises more than 500 concerts, parties, firework displays and a ‘wine fight’ where merrymakers soaked each other in tinto.

Every day at 8am, six fighting bulls along with four oxen run the 825 metre route from the Corrales de Santo Domingo to Pamplona’s Plaza de Toros.

An estimated one million spectators will watch thousands of people run with the bulls over the eight days of the San Fermin Festival.

Runners are ticketed and strictly limited to 3,000 per day and, contrary to popular belief,

From that moment they worked on developing joint projects, pursuing an unremitting search for a style of their own in fusion of graffiti and classical art.

Recently the pair completed stylized graffiti murals of the Greek gods and subjects from Greek Mythology in Spain and Canada, and also recently took part in the 2023 Mural Festival in Montreal.

In Spain, they have finished a mural in Merida, Extremadura, near to the city's famous Roman Hippodrome, once used for horse and chariot racing. Commenting on the new mural, PichiAvo said: “We painted a new version of the Venus del Mitreo which is exhibited in the Museo Nacional del Arte Romano also located in Merida.”

“It involved reconstructing the bust inspired by the Syra- cuse-type Venus from the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, since we found the similarity between the two works very fruitful,” they commented.

The synergy between classical art and graffiti can be seen in their many murals of the ancient Greek gods that combine contemporary street art with the sensibilities of the ancient world.

Some 277,754 people who turned 18 during the qualifying period for the 2022 Bonus applied for the money - around half of those who were eligible to do so. People who celebrate their 18th birthday this year can now apply for the 2023 grant with a closing date of September 30.