The following article
by Keko Jones was published in the No Bullshit Fanzine 2000 it
relates to the last death in the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona.
A Siren's Song
By Keko Jones
He was just another young American backpacker in the summer of
1995, skylarking his way across Europe with his pals. In the fall,
Matthew Peter Tassio would begin his career as an electrical engineer.
Until then, he was sowing wild oats.
From Chicago to Greece to Barcelona came Tassio, 22, with his
lifelong buddy, Jim Quinn. Tassio, a May 1995 graduate of the
University of Illinois, was to join Motorola that Fall. But for
the present, with time on their hands and in Spain for the first
time, the pair hooked up with two fellow backpackers and embarked
upon a fantastic adventure: They would hit Pamplona and run with
the bulls during the city's famed fiesta.
None of the quartet had much money, and hotels were booked solid
in the jam-packed city during fiesta, so they settled for an overnight
bus trip, planning to return the following day.
Tassio was excited. It was his first trip to Pamplona and its
annual festival in honor of its patron, San Fermín. He
had no way of knowing it also was to be his last.
Upon arriving at the Pamplona bus station early on the evening
of July 12, the four joined the teeming masses in the streets
for the all-night party. At fiesta, no one is a stranger, and
the foreigners immediately got into the mood, buying red pañuelos,
the traditional neckerchiefs, and partying all night with newfound
Spanish friends.
At some point during the night of revelry, before the sun rose
on the second-to-last day of the fiesta, Tassio and Quinn committed
to participate in the encierro, Pamplona's famed running of bulls
through the city's streets. Initially, Quinn was reluctant to
join the run, but he finally caved in to Tassio's entreaties.
They had not yet met any veterans, since experienced runners tend
to avoid the crowded late-night streets. As a result, they received
no seasoned advice on the safe way to run. This would be costly.
Do you guys want to run, Tassio and Quinn asked their traveling
companions? No way, said the two. We'll meet you at the bus station
to catch the bus back to Barcelona afterward.
Shortly before 8 a.m., Tassio and Quinn stationed themselves inside
the barreras, the twin barricades that separate the runners from
the spectators in the casco antiguo, the old city, its narrow
medieval streets overflowing. There were plenty of experienced
runners in the nervous, eager horde, and most of the novices had
received at least some basic instructions from the veterans.
Tassio chose to run in the segment of the course known as Calle
Santo Domingo, believed by many veterans to be among the most
challenging of the tramos, or stretches, of the run. It lies between
the corrales, where the bulls are impounded each night before
the encierro, and Pamplona's ayuntamiento, its ornate, baroque
City Hall. Here, the bulls are fresh - and looking for something
to kill.
Quinn wandered off to run elsewhere, promising to meet up with
Tassio after the encierro.
Tassio awaited the explosion of the rocket that signals the release
of the bulls from the holding corrales. It is not known whether
he had participated in the daily ritual prayer at the statue of
San Fermín placed in a niche cut into the wall opposite
the former military hospital on Calle Santo Domingo. Here, runners
seek the saint's protection during the encierro, chanting in Spanish:
"We ask San Fermín to be our patron.
Guide us in the run; give us your blessing."
Normally, when the gates of the corrales are opened, the six bulls
to be fought that night, along with two substitutes and the steers
trained to guide them in their run, rush into Calle Santo Domingo,
past the public market and the former military hospital. They
then turn left at the top of the street and swing past City Hall
through the Plaza Consistorial, the broad public square at its
foot. Here the bulls are fresh, bunched tightly, and angry.
While Tassio waited for his encounter with fate, Castellano, a
1,265-lb., reddish bull from the ranch of Torrestrella in Cadiz,
brooded silently in the corrales with his brothers, Tacaño,
Moravito, Estudioso, Perezoso and Pitillato.
At precisely 8 a.m., the rocket shot skyward and exploded, marking
for everyone within earshot the release of the bulls. The strong
corrales gates swung open, and Castellano and the others clattered
effortlessly up the slight incline of the Calle Santo Domingo.
There are runners known as los valientes, "the brave ones."
These are the "wannabes," and they are to be found throughout
the course. To hear them talk, you would think they are the most
heroic of runners. In practice, they have little heart for it,
and they flee toward the relative safety of the bullring immediately
upon hearing the rocket, rarely seeing or nearing a bull if they
can help it. A mindless, churning mass of frightened young men,
they immediately took up their flight at top speed; their greatest
danger being to themselves.
Upon seeing the stampede of the valientes, Tassio hesitated, momentarily
confused. He was woefully unprepared for the bull run, as evidenced
by his walking shorts with a sweater wrapped around his waist,
probably to ward off the chill night air of the evening before.
He had trotted as far as the Plaza Consistorial from his starting
point on Calle Santo Domingo, then stopped, turned and looked
back in an attempt to locate the bulls, which had not yet reached
him. Suddenly he spied them racing up the hill and around the
corner, scattering runners in all directions.
Tassio turned again to flee down course. He tripped over a runner
who had slipped and fallen directly in his path.
It was here that Tassio made his critical blunder.
If there is a cardinal rule of the encierro, it is this: If you
go down, stay down. Cover your head and don't move. Bulls respond
to motion, not to the color of a runner's garb or the matador's
cape. Once the bulls have passed, someone will give you the "all
clear," and then - and only then - do you get up.
Tassio immediately jumped up.
No one knows what caused him to do it, although guesses centered
on panic and inexperience. Many noticed, however, that he turned
to flee down course from the onrushing herd.
Castellano, leading the charge, barreled into Tassio at top speed.
Some 15 inches of curved, dagger-sharp horn plunged into his lower
right back. It hooked through his torso, ripping through major
blood vessels. The impact propelled him some 40 feet down the
street.
It was just 37 seconds into the run.
Castellano, apparently satisfied with his sole, murderous thrust,
did not give Tassio a second look. As the pack thundered past,
Tassio amazingly once again jumped up. Mercifully, the last straggling
bull ignored him. The mortally wounded youth made a final, futile
attempt to escape this avenue of death, then crumpled to the cobblestones.
His spasms bespoke the ominous nature of his injury.
A crack team of Spanish Red Cross trauma paramedics positioned
immediately adjacent to the accident site, leapt over the barreras
and within seconds were frantically attempting to save Tassio's
life. Already pallid and cadaver-like, he quickly was placed on
a litter as two medics attempted to stanch the massive flow of
blood.
"¡Venga, joven! ¡Venga!" one of the medics
yelled as he jammed a compress into the gaping wound left by Castellano's
horn. Come on, boy; respond!
They raced the semi-conscious young American through the curious
crowd. Blue emergency lights pulsed as the ambulance sped off
to the Hospital de Navarra. They arrived just nine minutes after
the second rocket, which signaled the bulls were clear of the
corrales gates.
It was not quick enough for Tassio.
Although some of the most expert horn-wound specialists in the
world worked furiously to save his life, their efforts proved
futile. He was pronounced dead at 8:50 a.m.
One of the medics assigned to the ambulance, Jesús María
Rueda, later told one of the local newspapers, the Diano de Navarra,
that Tassio was near death before reaching the hospital. He had
lost, the medic said, 90 percent of his blood through massive
hemorrhaging before they could get him into the trauma room.
Meanwhile, at the bus station, the other two backpackers were
vexed by the failure of Tassio and Quinn to arrive on time for
the trip back to Barcelona. The bus came and went with no sign
of the erstwhile runners. While they pondered what to do, a police
car carrying a municipal officer and two social workers pulled
into the station.
Are you the friends of Matthew Peter Tassio, they were asked?
Yes? Would you be kind enough to come with us? Bewildered, piled
into the police car and arrived at the hospital social workers
at 10:30 a.m. There they received the sad news.
Quinn, faced with the daunting task of identifying his friend's
body at the hospital's morgue, later was secluded in a room at
the Hotel Maisonnave, provided at the city's expense, to await
the arrival of Tassio's parents from Glen Ellyn, a Chicago suburb.
The Maisonnave, ironically, is the hotel of choice for Spain's
top matadores visiting the city.
Tassio was the first American ever to lose his life in Pamplona's
running of the bulls, and was the first fatality since 1980; there
have been 13 deaths in the run during this century. His death
cast an enormous pall over the city that could not be broken,
not by the numerous musical bands that tried, or by the vast quantities
of alcohol normally consumed each day during the fiesta.
Novice runners who had seen the ashen-faced body on the litter
shivered with the realization that could have been them. Veterans
tortured themselves with thoughts of why no one had warned Tassio
of the dangers.
"Jesus Christ! He stood up in front of the pack after being
knocked down!" cried one of the most skilled English-speaking
runners of the current crop. "Why didn't somebody see he
was unprepared for the run and either get him the hell out of
there or give him a quick tutorial? Didn't anybody give a God
damn?"
The rhetorical question born of frustration and emotion was directed
to a group of veteran runners gathered for coffee at the Windsor
Pub in the Plaza del Castillo, the town's main square, shortly
after the fatal encierro. No one answered the speaker, who obviously
was distraught and repeatedly was running his fingers through
his long blond hair in frustration. Many of them harbored the
same thought.
The bullfight televised that evening on TVE, Televisión
Española's Channel 1, was preceded by a moment of silence
in Tassio's honor. Trumpeters of the Peña La Unica, normally
one of the city's most boisterous social clubs, played "Taps."
Around the plaza de toros, one could almost hear the tears that
flowed freely from the eyes of 20,000 locals and visitors alike.
The bullring, usually a scene of bedlam, was shrouded in a decidedly
eerie, almost unearthly quiet.
Veteran matador Juan Moro had drawn Castellano by lot earlier
in the afternoon. That evening, he signified with a brindis al
cielo, a graceful sweeping gesture toward the heavens with his
cap, that he was dedicating his performance to Tassio. Castellano
later was to receive, posthumously, the prize as the bravest bull
fought during the entire eight days of bullfights.
"The death of Matthew Peter Tassio is a wound in the heart
to all Pamplonicas," the city's new mayor, Javier Chourraut,
said in a July 15 news conference a day after the fiesta ended.
Chourraut told reporters after the tragedy that "citified"
Americans particularly are at risk because they fail to see the
dangers inherent with wild animals such as fighting bulls. Americans,
Chourraut said, tend to think of running the bulls in terms of
television programs or Disneyland attractions, adding that most
American youths have never been near a fighting bull, a statement
hardly debatable.
Throughout the day of Tassio's death, at the spot adjacent to
City Hall where he fell mortally wounded, an impromptu memorial
sprung up, fueled by the emotions of the multitude attending the
festival. On the curb at the crest of Calle Santo Domingo, a neat
mound of memorabilia began to grow: bouquets of roses, hats, caps,
hundreds of red fiesta neckerchiefs, pictures of Christ and other
religious icons, lit candles of prayer, of reverence and of remembrance.
In the center of the mound lay a copy of another local newspaper,
the Diario de Noticias; which featured a photo in graphic detail
covering the entire front page, taken at the instant of Tassio's
goring. It bore a handwritten inscription, in Spanish:
"In memory of my American friend I never knew.
Your death has touched us all. May you rest in peace forever."
It was unsigned. The mound mushroomed in the waning days of the
fiesta.
The Festival of San Fermín ended, as it always does, at
midnight on July 14 with the Pobre de Mi, the mournful song and
candlelight procession through the darkened streets of the old
city. After eight days of wild abandon, the revelers sing:
"Poor me; oh, poor me; San Fermín's festival has ended."
That year, the melancholy was doubly poignant. When the thousands
gathered in front of city hall for the fiesta's closing ceremony,
they surrounded the memorial to Tassio. Spontaneously, they changed
the words of the lamentation, slowly swaying as they sang a final
salute to the fallen runner:
"Pobre de ti, pobre de ti . . . Poor you; oh, poor you .
. ."
That afternoon, Tassio's parents, Thomas and Cynthia had arrived
in Pamplona after a hurried flight from Chicago. They were joined
at the airport in the nearby pueblo of Noáin by their son's
traveling companion, Jim Quinn.
Early on the morning of the 15th, they were met by Mayor Chourraut,
Bilbao-based U.S. consular officer Hilarión Martinez Llanes,
ambulance services director Javier Sebastián, and city
officials Rafael López de Cerain and Maite Uriarte.
The fiesta was over.
As if in search for him, Tassio's parents slowly walked the tramos
of the encierro. As they reached the spot in plaza where Tassio
fell, his mother placed a bouquet of flowers on the steps leading
into the ayuntamiento, the City Hall.
It had been Martinez Llanes's duty to notify the Tassios of their
son's death. It was not one he relished, and he told local reporters
it was "one of the toughest things I've ever had to do."
Tough, too, for the grieving parents.
"This has been our greatest loss; please allow us to suffer
these moments in solitude," Thomas Tassio had told a reporter
for the Diario de Navarra upon the family's arrival at Noáin.
The Spanish news media that had gathered at the airport for their
arrival honored the father's request. It could not have occurred
in the United States.
The Tassios remained in Pamplona for just 21 hours; long enough
to visit with the ambulance driver who raced their stricken son
to the hospital, doctors at the Hospital of Navarra who fought
so desperately to save his life, and city officials.
And then, at 4 p.m. on July 15, the body of Matthew Peter Tassio
left Pamplona forever, accompanied by his parents and his buddy.
They departed aboard an Air Navarra ATR-42 turboprop aircraft
bound for Barcelona, where the entourage transferred to a jumbo
jet bound for the United States.
As the Tassios bore home the body of their son, officials of the
city of Pamplona quietly, and with solemn dignity, gathered up
the articles of the impromptu memorial and took them away. |
