The 2026 edition of Spain’s famous San Fermín festival opened on Monday with its usual explosion of colour and noise — but also, once again, with a banner reading “destroy Israel” visible among the tens of thousands gathered for the launch ceremony.
Pamplona’s nine-day San Fermín festival, home to the world-famous Running of the Bulls, kicked off on Monday with the Chupinazo — the ceremonial rocket launch that signals the start of 209 hours of non-stop celebration. But as in previous years, the festivities in the Plaza Consistorial were shadowed by political displays, among them a banner reading “destroy Israel,” according to Spanish outlet OKDiario. The publication reported that groups linked to the Basque nationalist left had used the packed crowd to unfurl banners and flags carrying political messages, describing it as a pattern that has repeated on 6 July for several years running.
Health Workers Given the Honour of Lighting the Rocket
This year’s ceremony carried its own note of local pride, with the task of lighting the rocket handed to two representatives of Navarre’s emergency health services, Clint Jean Louis Fernández and Araceli Sergio Aguilera. Their nomination, put forward by local peña La Escalerica, won Pamplona’s annual public vote with 3,775 of 11,740 votes cast, according to elDiario.es. More than 14,000 people crowded into the Plaza Consistorial — a space of barely 1,100 square metres — to watch the moment the festival officially began.
Palestinian Flags and ETA Banners in the Crowd
Alongside the traditional flags of Navarre and the Basque Ikurriña that are a fixture of the ceremony, this year’s crowd also displayed several Palestinian flags and banners reading messages such as “Stop genocide” and slogans opposing Israel, elDiario.es reported. A separate banner calling for the release of ETA prisoners also appeared. OKDiario noted that such displays sit at odds with what it described as the wish of most local friend groups, known as cuadrillas, to keep the day focused purely on the festivities rather than politics.
Echoes of Last Year’s Controversy
The banner is not a new phenomenon at the festival. At the 2025 Chupinazo, the honour of lighting the rocket went to Yala Nafarroa con Palestina, a pro-Palestinian platform that won that year’s public vote. Members of the group shouted “Stop the genocide” and “Free Palestine” from the town hall balcony before lighting the fuse, according to Spanish outlet El Independiente, and a “destroy Israel” banner was again visible in the crowd below.
That episode drew a sharp response from Israeli officials at the time. Dan Poraz, Israel’s senior diplomat in Spain, wrote on social media: “There was a time when crowds shouted ‘Death to the Jews’ in Europe’s public squares, or burned them alive. Today, they shout ‘Destroy Israel’, as in this photo. Same hatred. Same chants. A new mask. Israel is the ‘Jew’ of today.” His comments were reshared by Israel’s Foreign Ministry, and the Israeli embassy in Spain separately criticised Pamplona’s council over its selection of the platform to lead the ceremony that year.
Yala Nafarroa con Palestina describes itself as representing 1,700 individuals and 230 collectives, with the backing of international supporters, and says it has spent more than 18 months campaigning to draw attention to what it calls genocide, occupation and apartheid facing Palestinians. Lidón Soriano, one of the group’s representatives, told reporters last year she had felt compelled to add calls for an end to the “genocide” and for a “free Palestine” to the ceremony, saying: “It’s the message that the public has demanded,” referring to the vote that had put her group in charge of the rocket launch.
