Profiles of Pamplona: The Spiritual Descendants of Gertrude Stein's Lost Generation and of Ernest Hemingway's Characters in The Sun Also Rises. Scan of my article in Madrid's venerable English language magazine, Guidepost, July 11, 1975

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 Profiles of Pamplona, an article with my photographs that I published 

in Madrid's venerable Guidepost magazine in Madrid back in 1975. 

The profiles in this article are about many of the incredible characters I knew in Pamplona at La Fiesta de San Fermín (featuring the Running of the Bulls), also known as sanfermines, in the 1970s.   Some of these regulars at the fiesta had been coming to Pamplona since the 1950s.

Many of these people were spiritual descendents of Gertrude Stein's Lost Generation and of Ernest Hemingway's spirit and his characters in The Sun Also Rises.  In fact, Juanito Quintana was the prototype for Montoya, the hotel owner in The Sun Also Rises, and bullrunner Matt Carney, American Matador John Fulton and others had actually been at San Fermín when Hemingway was there in the 1950s and had experiences with him.

Many of the unforgettable people in this article are no longer alive; many of them became friends, some of them very close friends for life -- and beyond.   

Here is the full original scanned article.

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  Shall deeds of Caesar or Napoleon ring
More true than Don Quixote's vapouring?
Hath winged Pegasus more nobly trod
Than Rocinante stumbling up to God?

 

Poem by Archer M. Huntington inscribed under the Don Quixote on his horse Rocinante bas-relief sculpture by his wife, Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington,

in the courtyard of the Hispanic Society of America’s incredible museum at 613 W. 155th Street, New York City.

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About Gerry Dawes

My good friend Gerry Dawes, the unbridled Spanish food and wine enthusiast cum expert whose writing, photography, and countless crisscrossings of the peninsula have done the most to introduce Americans—and especially American food professionals—to my country's culinary life." -- Chef-restaurateur-humanitarian José Andrés, Nobel Peace Prize Nominee and Oscar Presenter 2019

Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004, was awarded the CineGourLand “Cinéfilos y Gourmets” (Cinephiles & Gourmets) prize in 2009 in Getxo (Vizcaya) and received the 2009 Association of Food Journalists Second Prize for Best Food Feature in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià. 

In December, 2009, Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés. 

". . .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adrià in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher, Food Arts, October 2009. 

Writing, Photography, & Specialized Tours of Spain & Tour Advice

For custom-designed tours of Spain, organized and lead by Gerry Dawes, and custom-planned Spanish wine, food, cultural and photographic itineraries, send inquiries to gerrydawes@aol.com.  

I have planned and led tours for such culinary stars as Chefs Thomas Keller, Mark Miller, Mark Kiffin, Michael Lomonaco and Michael Chiarello and such personalities as baseball great Keith Hernandez and led on shorter excursions and have given detailed travel advice to many other well-known chefs and personalities such as Drew Nieporent, Norman Van Aken, Karen Page and Andrew Dornenberg, Christopher Gross, Rick Moonen, James Campbell Caruso and many others.

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“The American writer and town crier for all good Spanish things Gerry Dawes . . . the American connoisseur of all things Spanish . . .” Michael Paterniti, The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge and The World’s Greatest Piece of Cheese

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"Gerry Dawes, I can't thank you enough for opening up Spain to me." -- Michael Chiarello on Twitter. 

"Chiarello embarked on a crash course by traveling to Spain for 10 days in 2011 with Food Arts

contributing authority Gerry Dawes, a noted expert on Spanish food and wine.  Coqueta's (Chiarello's new restaurant at Pier Five, San Francisco) chef de cuisine, Ryan McIlwraith, later joined Dawes for his own two week excursion, as well. Sampling both old and new, they visited wineries and marketplaces, as well as some of Spain's most revered dining establishments, including the Michelin three-star Arzak, Etxebarri, the temple to live fire-grilling; Tickets, the playful Barcelona tapas bar run by Ferran Adrià and his brother, Albert; and ABaC, where Catalan cooking goes avant-garde." - - Carolyn Jung, Food Arts, May 2013.

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"In his nearly thirty years of wandering the back roads of Spain," Gerry Dawes has built up a much stronger bank of experiences than I had to rely on when I started writing Iberia...His adventures far exceeded mine in both width and depth..." -- James A. Michener, author of Iberia: Spanish Travels and Reflections

 

Pilot for a reality television series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.
 

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine & Cultural Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain  

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@gmail.com

James Michener's Iberia: Spanish Travels and Reflections: More Autographs & Stories Behind the Signatures. The Legendary Bullrunner Matt Carney & Big Dave Pierce, pg. 501

  

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All photographs by Gerry Dawes©2020, except the one in Iberia, which is by Robert Vavra, photographer of Iberia.

 

Autographs in my copy of Iberia, Matt Carney (in the photo) and Big Dave Pierce, pg. 501.

"To Gerry Dawes,  God love ye for putting the story (a tale about a haunted house in Louisiana, channeled from comedian Brother Dave Gardner) in my lap. We'll all do right." -- Matt Carney

"I hope all your life is one big San Fermines, but without the runs." Big Dave (Pierce)

 Matt Carney, Bar Txoko, Pamplona 1971.  Photograph by Gerry Dawes©2020.

 

Big Dave Pierce, Pamplona, 1970s.  Photograph by Gerry Dawes©2020.

 

 Big Dave Pierce and Matt Carney, Bar Txoko, Pamplona, 1970.  Photograph by Gerry Dawes©2020.

"I left the dinner party and wandered back to the square, where by purest chance someone said, ‘That’s Matt Carney over there. You want to get the straight dope about his fight with Hemingway?’

It was in this way that I met the legendary Carney, a forty-year-old California Irishman who, his friends are convinced, will become a first-rate novelist. Many years ago he came to Europe to finish a book but as he was knocking about Paris he was spotted by an agent whose job it was to find male models for advertising. Carney had the rugged New World look of a Mississippi gambler, and French advertisers flocked to him in such numbers that he earned a great deal of money. He was conned into posing for high-fashion ads and soon found himself the pin-up boy of Paris. For the past seven years he had been working on a novel, Run Out of Time, but had been somewhat sidetracked by the© purchase of a bar in Torremolinos. He loved Spain and spoke like a drunken angel, with fiery Irish eloquence, and as he approached my table I saw that his handsome features were marked by a colossal black eye, which made him doubly Irish and doubly handsome.

‘Who hung the mouse on you?’ I asked.

‘A Basque woodchopper with a right hand of phenomenal speed. But as I went down I had the presence of mind to kick him in the balls and when he doubled up I knocked out one of his front teeth. So now he’s a Basque woodchopper with a phenomenal right and one missing tooth.’" - -  James A. Michener, Iberia: Spanish Travels and Reflections. 

 

Gerry Dawes (left, center), American novillero Bill Cimino, writer Toby Williams, Juanito Quintana (Montoya in The Sun Also Rises), Matador John Fulton (center, not in focus), un-IDed, unIDed, Teddy Bloom Harry Hubert (far left),  David Black (aka DOM, The Dirty Old Man) and Matt Carney (far  right), Bar Txoko, July 7, 1970.  Photograph with my camera, possibly by David Black.

 "After the encierro, we walked over to the Plaza del Castillo and within five minutes I found myself sitting at the same table at the Bar Txoko with the legendary Matt Carney, an American model and would-be writer who lived in Paris.  Michener had immortalized Carney’s bull-running and supposed brawling at Pamplona in Iberia.   Carney was as handsome as Michener had described and he was in fine spirits.  I was excited about meeting Carney after all I had read about him in Iberia, but I was a little apprehensive about his reputation as a brawler.  When Fulton introduced me to him, Carney flashed his famous Irish grin and something about him made me feel I belonged, that I was no newcomer, no outsider, at his table.   Over the years, I would subsequently observe Matt welcome other people to the fiesta in much the same way.  Carney had a big heart and his idea of San Fermín was a fiesta of sharing, not of exclusion.

But, today, my first day at San Fermín, I was going to see both sides of the coin. Within ten minutes after we had pulled up chairs around Matt’s table, his demeanor suddenly changed.  “That’s a lie,” I heard him say.  Then he shouted,  “You’re a goddamn liar.  Take that back, I said, take it back!”  He jumped up and slapped hit the spectacle-wearing man sitting beside him.The man’s glasses flew off.   

‘Wow,’ I thought, ‘Carney sure lives up to his reputation.  Michener was right; Carney wanted to fight Hemingway, he got clocked by a Basque woodchopper. . . and now, right in front of me, he’s slapping the Hell out of someone named David Black.  I’m going to be damned careful what I say in front of this guy.” I was sure that Carney regularly blew up like Old Faithful and that after Iberia was published, he must have thought it was his duty to keep up his brawling since, along with his bullrunning, broad Irish smile and gravelly jota singing, his whole persona now bordered on a conjunto artistico-folklorico, an artistic-folkloric ensemble, on the verge of being declared of touristic merit. Nothing could have been further from the truth.  I subsequently knew Matt Carney for another 18 years and spent parts of ten sanfermines with him.  Other than the slapping around of David Black, known far and wide as "The Dirty Old Man" and a man so contemptible, obnoxious, and purposely provocative that there are few regulars at Pamplona who had not hit him, I saw Matt Carney in just one other fight, one he did not provoke.  Carney had been running the bulls for a couple of decades, but tomorrow July 8, I had my first date with the encierro." -- Gerry Dawes, Homage to Iberia (a work-in-progress), the authorized sequel to James A. Michener's Iberia:  Spanish Travels and Reflections

 

Gerry Dawes, American novillero Bill Cimino, writer Toby Williams, Juanito Quintana (Montoya in The Sun Also Rises), Matador John Fulton, un-IDed, unIDed, Teddy Bloom Harry Hubert (far left),  David Black (aka DOM, The Dirty Old Man), Bar Txoko, July 7, 1970.  Photograph by Matt Carney, who had been sitting between me and David Black.

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 About Gerry Dawes

Gerry Dawes is the Producer and Program Host of Gerry Dawes & Friends, a weekly radio progam on WPWL 103.7 FM Pawling Public Radio in Pawling, New York.

  Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004, was awarded the CineGourLand “Cinéfilos y Gourmets” (Cinephiles & Gourmets) prize in 2009 in Getxo (Vizcaya) and received the 2009 Association of Food Journalists Second Prize for Best Food Feature in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià. 

In December, 2009, Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés. 

". . .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adrià in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher, Food Arts, October 2009. 
 

Pilot for a reality television series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.
 

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine & Cultural Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain  

Gerry Dawes can be reached at  gerrydawes@gmail.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@spanishartisanwine.com

Pamplona Portraits from the Past: Alice Hall, Matt Carney, Derry Hall, Big Dave Pierce, Chris Humphreys, Joe Distler, Jimmy Hollander, Davey Crockett, Donnie Spicehandler, Charles Patrick Scanlan, Tim Hatfield, Noel Chandler, Jesse Graham, Ray Mouton & More

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Matt Carney.

All photographs by Gerry Dawes©2011. Contact: gerrydawes@aol.com

Highly Recommended Book: Pamplona--Running the Bulls, Bars and Barrios in Fiesta de San Fermín by Ray Mouton.

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This book may be purchased at Amazon.com (see banner at the top of this blog).

I highly recommend Ray Mouton's Pamplona: Running the Bulls, Bars and Barrios in Fiesta de San Fermín is the best book you are likely to read on Pamplona, the Running of the Bulls and the foreign contingent who descend upon Pamplona in early July every year to watch yet another chapter in the extended living version of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.

Disclaimer:  Mouton was kind enough to use a few of my photographs in the book, give me some paragraphs as a contributing photographer and autograph a wonderful inscription in the frontispiece to my copy of his book, but none of that would make a difference if this were not a great book.  Believe me, from one who has been to San Fermín some seventeen times, this book is the real deal!

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Persistence of Memory* (Salvador Dalí) Five-Watch Rating.

About Gerry Dawes