Does This Video Show Croatian Fans Celebrating During 2022 FIFA World Cup? No!

A video showing a large crowd celebrating on a street is being shared on social media with a claim that it shows Croatian fans celebrating their national football team’s victory over Brazil during the ongoing 2022 FIFA World Cup, which put them into the semi-finals of the tournament.

(Archives of more such claims on social media can be seen here, here and here.)

Is that true?: No, the video shows the opening ceremony of the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, Spain. While we were not able to confirm which year the video is from, it appears to be from the 2018 edition of the festival.

How did we find out?: In the video, we saw a banner that read ‘ohlala! Peluqueria Guelbenzu 30’ hanging off a building.

We looked this name up on Google and it led us to a salon in Pamplona, Spain.

What does the video show?: We then divided the viral video into keyframes using InVid and supplemented the reverse image search with keywords ‘Pamplona, Spain’.

• This led us to photos on stock image website Getty, which showed us photos of an event called the San Fermin Festival in Spain’s Pamplona. 

• The photo’s caption mentions that it shows the San Fermin Festival held in Pamplona, Spain on 6 July 2018.

Opening of the San Fermin Festival: We compared these photos to the viral video, and found many similarities.

• We noticed a banner which read ‘ohlala! Peluqueria’ in the background and a banner reading ‘Northern Spain Travel’ in both stills. 

(Note: Swipe right to view a magnified version of the banners)

• This photo of the band’s performance in the street also resembles the view of the crowd in the viral video.

• The emblem seen in this still resembles the one on a man’s neck scarf from the viral video.

We looked for videos of the festivities on YouTube and found several videos of the event from 2018 from different angles.

• In this video shared by Northern Spain Travel, the crowd can be heard chanting the same song as heard in the viral video.

Here too, we noticed many similarities between this video and the viral video.

• The same green, white, and black flag can be seen near the band in this video.

• The band is also seen standing close to a building with columns.

• A block of buildings with the same banner and multicoloured wall can be seen in both screenshots.

(Note: Swipe right to view all photos.)

We came across visuals of the festival from 2016 and 2017 of the festival, which bore resemblance to the celebrations seen in the viral video.

The San Fermin Festival: The San Fermin Festival is a nine-days long celebration held in July every year.

• The most popular event at this festival is called ‘Running of the Bulls,’ where attendees run down the streets of Pamplona, chased by bulls.

• The festival opens with a rocket being fired – referred to as the chupinazo – and a band performing.

• The San Fermin Festival was cancelled in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and resumed in 2022.

Conclusion: It is an old video of the San Fermin Festival in Pamplona, Spain and some visual aspects match videos from 2018, indicating that it might be from that year.

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