20 June 2012

Global Seminars & Invited Speaker Series

SAN FERMÍN CYCLE

The Sanfermines in the photo library of the file Municipal of Pamplona

Mr. José Luis Molins Mugueta.
Chairof Navarrese Heritage and Art

As historical antecedents, overlapping elements in the shaping of the modern Sanfermines, it is worth considering three ingredients: the celebration of the religious festivity, the religious festivitythe feria francaof low-medieval origin; and the atavistic fondness of the Navarrese and Pamplona people for the bullfighting spectacles. The religious commemoration of San Fermín, established by Bishop Pedro de Artajona in 1186, was set for 10 October, the date of the saint's visit to his See of Amiens, entrance. But the prelate Bernardo de Rojas, at the request of the representatives of Pamplona, moved it to the 7th of July, as it was a more convenient timeIt has remained on this date from 1591 to the present day. In 1381 Charles II of Evreux -Carlos the Bad- had granted the city the privilege of the free fairIn 1381, Charles II of Evreux - Charles the Bad - had granted the City the privilege of the feria franca, a market Exemptof taxes, attractive to merchants, who enjoyed legal protection, free transit, immunity from arrest and the unseizability of their goods during the twenty days following the feast of St. John the Baptist, 24th June. Much later, in 1743, the beginning of this privilege was moved to the commemoration of St. Peter's Day, on the 29th. The love of the people of Navarre for all things bullfighting bullfighting is well known; suffice it to say that Navarre is the birthplace of bullfighting on foot. The uncertainty of the weather in autumn was the argument put forward at apply forfor the transfer of the Patron Saint's festival from October to July. But Don Fermín de Lubián, prior of the cathedral chapter in the mid-18th century, had another reason: the people considered that no saint's day was worthy enough if the sacred services were not followed by bullfights. And the bulls were fiercer and more aggressive in the heat of the summer...

The Sanferminera theme is very much present in the photo library of the fileMunicipal of PamplonaBoth in the number of images and in the issueof authors, diversity of techniques and supports, thematic variety, aesthetic quality and interest of the subject matter. It is therefore possible to visually reconstruct the evolution of the fiesta from the end of the 19th century to the present day, in terms of popular aspects ("Cohete/Chupinazo", "pobre de mí", "riau-riau"); religious aspects ("Vísperas", "Procesión", "Octava"); protocol (Corporation in "Cuerpo de Ciudad", entourage, ("Comparsa de Gigantes", "dantzaris", "la Pamplonesa"); bullfighting ("Comparsa de Gigantes", "dantzaris", "la Pamplonesa"); bullfighting (unblocking, "encierrillo", running of the bulls, "vaquillas", bullfights, atmosphere of place, "peñas de mozos"); livestock fair; "barracas" and a very long etcetera, which includes the "presanfermines" - official Fiestas posters, for example - or inaugurations and singular celebrations, which have resultcoincided as a consequence of the deliberate will of the authorities.

In the municipal photo library it is necessary to consider, first of all, the collection own collection of the Town HallThis was initially organised by the Archivist Mr. Leandro Olivier in the 1920s, and later increased by the important donation made in 1944 by Mr. Aquilino García Deán, an administrative officer, who was also linked to the publication of "La Avalancha", consisting of documents, plates and photographic copies. To this must be added the work of Julio Altadill, Mauro Ibáñez, José Roldán and Félix Mena, Benito Rupérez, Vicente Istúriz, José Ayala and Julio Cía, among other professional and amateur photographers. The dedication of Dr. Arazuri, already in the fifties, to his documented hobby as a collector of Pamplona subjects, people and issues, in photographs of all kinds subject, meant for a time a profitable exchange, of communicating vessels in two directions, between the municipal collection and his collection. And so it was during the time of the archivist Vicente Galbete, when copies of Marín y Coyne, Zaragüeta and Anselmo Goñi were added to the collection. The following heads of file- the present writer, until the end of 2010, and now Ana Hueso - have continued the work of organising and increasing the municipal photo library until the present day.

The photo library of the fileMunicipal de Pamplona has recently been enriched by three important contributions, made as unrestricted donations, which are of great interest for the subject of this lecture, centred on the theme of the fiestas of San Fermin. These are the Rodríguez Juguera CollectionCollection, from the Zubieta and Retegui Collection and the José Joaquín Arazuri Collection.

In 2009 the Rodríguez Zunzarren family, resident in Valencia, acting as heirs of the Rodríguez Juguera family, originally from Pamplona, donated to Pamplona City Council, for its file, the so-called Rodríguez Juguera CollectionCollection, a collection of one hundred and sixty-seven snapshots of the "encierro" (photographic and postcard copies), taken between 1919 and 1960.

Also in 2009, María Jesús Ruiz de Azagra Támara, widow of Francisco Javier Carlos Zubieta y Retegui, made a donation to Pamplona City Council of the surviving funds of the company's name Zubieta y Reteguifor the photographic library of the Municipal file. The establishment had been founded in 1940 by Francisco Zubieta Vidaurre (1904-1998) and Andrés Retegui Gastearena (1911-1987) as a photographic studio with a gallery, with its address at 17 Espoz y Mina Street. Francisco Javier Carlos Zubieta y Retegui, Andrés' only son and Paco Zubieta's nephew, continued the activity of the company name until his death in 2007. Graphic contributors to the local press, Paco Zubieta and Andrés Retegui had taken their first steps in the studio of Benito Rupérez Herrero (¿-1942) (Benito Rupérez, who had been an apprentice with Emilio Pliego, settled in Pamplona in 1905; he had addresses at Paseo de Sarasate, 1 and Yanguas y Miranda. He was the father of Luis Rupérez Pérez (1904-1968), also a photographer. Rupérez's studio was a school for many photographers.

The iconographic content of the Zubieta y Retegui Collection includes portraits of people, reports of social events, both public and private, as well as commercial and industrial events in Navarre and, in particular, in Pamplona. The negatives, positives, slides, paper and digital copies donated to the photo library at fileMunicipal represent a volume of over a million images. But today we are interested in the reports of the San Fermín fiestas, especially the running of the bulls. Paco Zubieta, at the foot of the fence, and Andrés Retegui at laboratory, had photographers distributed along the route of the degree program. This enabled them to offer a daily report of the most representative scenes of the workshop in their shop window shortly after the bullfight had finished, a circumstance that attracted a large number of curious spectators. 

As mentioned above, accredited specializationrefers to Dr. Arazuri's love of photography. Indeed, his interest in collecting and documenting graphic aspects of Pamplona, its urban evolution, its inhabitants, its festivals and traditions, as well as the events, activities and works of its institutions, in a chronological period between 1862 and 1995, took the form of a photographic collection that can be provisionally quantified at around twenty-three thousand images. With selfless pamplonesismo, his widow, Doña María Sagrario Irigaray, in 2010 donated the collection officially known as the José Joaquín Arazuri Collection to the City Council for its Municipal file. 

Apart from file, but in municipal jurisdiction, since 1999 the areade Educationy Cultura has had the San Fermín 1950s photographic collection, by the author Inge Morath, co-founder of the Magnum Agency. It consists of eighty-eight copies of the originals taken in 1954 by the North American photographer of Austrian origin, who disseminated the Pamplona fiestas in the Anglo-Saxon sphere through images, as Hemingway did through literature. The acquisition allows the City Council to exhibit this material and to publish it for its own purposes.

Showcase of Zubieta and Retegui
fileMunicipal of Pamplona. Col. J.J. Arazuri