Ernest Hemingway<\/a> \u2019s book that launched the future Noble Laureate to literary fame and put Pamplona on the map for millions of people around the world.<\/p>\nHemingway\u2019s 1926 novel \u201cThe Sun Also Rises\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
Its success established \u201cThe Sun Also Rises\u201d as a cornerstone of the American literary canon, right up there with F. Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s \u201cThe Great Gatsby.\u201d It also popularized the term \u201clost generation\u201d to describe the tight-knit group of early 20th-century writers expatriated in Paris. Hemingway’s terse style forever changed American literature.<\/p>\n
Hillmann, who hails from Chicago, was 19 when Hemingway\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the first book I ever read,\u201d 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. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Hillmann\u2019s appreciation led him to earn a doctorate in English, and now it is his turn to teach \u201cThe Sun Also Rises\u201d at East-West University in Chicago and write about bull running.<\/p>\n
Americans are the biggest group of foreign bull runners<\/p>\n
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\u2019s City Hall.<\/p>\n
Dallas-based tour operator Bruce Anderson, whose company \u201cRunning Of The Bulls\u201d has helped thousands of Americans attend San Fermin over the years, says that Hemingway\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of energy, a lot of excitement around just remembering that book and the impact that it\u2019s had,\u201d said Anderson, himself a lifelong Hemingway fan. He spoke in Pamplona\u2019s art deco Caf\u00e9 Iru\u00f1a, which features heavily as a drinking spot in \u201cThe Sun Also Rises\u201d and today houses a life-size statue of Hemingway bellying up to the bar.<\/p>\n
And Anderson, with his thick white beard, is something of a Hemingway look-alike. Local Spaniards often call out to him: \u201cPapa!\u201d \u2013 a nickname for their adopted hero.<\/p>\n
It is impossible to avoid Hemingway in Pamplona<\/p>\n
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: \u201cAt noon of Sunday, the 6th of July, the fiesta exploded. There is no other way to describe it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u201cThe Sun Also Rises.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHemingway did a lot for Pamplona because he made it known around the world,\u201d said Fernando Hualde, who worked for four decades as a receptionist in the hotel.<\/p>\n
Hemingway\u2019s legacy has become complicated over time<\/p>\n
Hemingway\u2019s local legacy, however, is mixed.<\/p>\n
Besides 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 \u201cThe Sun Also Rises,\u201d he spills far more ink on descriptions of their bravery than on the bull runs.<\/p>\n
Animal welfare activist Brook Spurling said during a protest against the San Fermin bullfights that \u201cHemingway wrote about many, many themes that today would not be accepted into society. He writes about hunting, about war, and we don\u2019t want to be appreciating these themes today.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s example of drinking to excess.<\/p>\n
Some locals take pride in spots that weren\u2019t touched by Hemingway. Local literature professor Gabriel Insausti of Pamplona\u2019s University of Navarra recalls being in a bar with a sign that read \u201cHemingway was not here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn general, Hemingway has become a product of a franchise associated with San Fermin festival that has obscured his novel,\u201d Insausti said. \u201cPeople know who Hemingway is, but they haven\u2019t read his novel.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the power of Hemingway\u2019s English prose lives on<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
After another goring in 2017, Hillmann told the AP from his hospital bed in Pamplona that he would not stop running. \u201cPeople think this is just crazy people running. There is real art. If you pay attention, you can see it,\u201d he said then.<\/p>\n
Hemingway’s granddaughter, the actress Mariel Hemingway, recalls being treated \u201clike royalty\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
That fascination with death is likewise timeless.<\/p>\n
\u201cIdentity, love, purpose, and how to rebuild after profound loss … those themes haven\u2019t ever changed. That\u2019s what\u2019s great about my grandfather,\u201d Mariel Hemingway told the AP from her home in Idaho.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he captured something that will never go away.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.news4jax.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PAMPLONA \u2013 Bill Hillmann has been gored three times while running with the bulls in Spain, but he wouldn\u2019t miss this year\u2019s San Fermin festival for anything. It marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Ernest Hemingway \u2019s book that launched the future Noble Laureate to literary fame and put Pamplona on the map […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2489748,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[490220,490224,490222,21741,425197,490221,490223,21818,410213,22814],"class_list":["post-2489747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-bill-hillmann","tag-brook-spurling","tag-bruce-anderson","tag-entertainment","tag-ernest-hemingway","tag-fernando-hualde","tag-gabriel-insausti","tag-lifestyle","tag-mariel-hemingway","tag-world-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Hemingways-century-old-The-Sun-Also-Rises-still-inspires-Americans-to.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2489747"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2489749,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489747\/revisions\/2489749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2489748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2489747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2489747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2489747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}