This video does not show the Croatian celebrations at the FIFA World Cup 2022  – FactCrescendo | The leading fact-checking website in India

This is an old video of the opening ceremony of the San Fermin festival in Spain. The video does not show the celebrations in Croatia after their team qualified for the semi-final of the FIFA World Cup 2022.

Despite Croatia’s semifinal loss to Argentina, a video of a large crowd celebrating on a street is being widely shared on social media with the claim that it shows Croatian fans celebrating their football team’s victory over Brazil during the ongoing 2022 FIFA World Cup.

With the caption “Flying into the Semi-Finals Congratulations Croatia!This is way the Croatians celebrate. #FIFAWorldCup   #Qatar2022 #Qatar #FIFAWorldCup2022 #Croatia #SemiFinalstheir entry into the semi finals…!” 

But Fact Crescendo found that the viral claim is false and the video is from Spain. Let’s check the facts.

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Fact Check-

We started our investigation by running a simple reverse image search on Google, with the key frames of the video and whose results led us to Getty images which had uploaded almost same of the viral video image on 6 July 2017. 

The description reads “Pamplonesa” municipal music band performs during the launch of the ‘Chupinazo’ (start rocket) to mark the kickoff at noon sharp of the San Fermin Festival, in front of the Town Hall of Pamplona, northern Spain, on July 6, 2017. A red-and-white sea of revellers soaked each other with wine in a packed Pamplona square today to kick off Spain’s most famous fiesta, the San Fermin bull-running festival. 

You can see more images of the event from Getty images.

Taking this as a cue, we looked further into the web and discovered more reports and photographs of Spain’s famous festival.

The Wall Street Journal

In the viral video, we saw a board that read ‘ohlala! Peluqueria Guelbenzu 30’ hanging off a building the same board we can see in this photograph.

You can see a comparison of the screenshot of viral video and the images of San Fermin Bull Running Festival below.

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

The San Fermin Festival is an annual nine-day celebration held in July. The most popular event at this festival is the ‘Running of the Bulls,’ in which participants run down the streets of Pamplona while being chased by bulls. The festival begins with the launch of a rocket, known as the chupinazo, and the performance of a band. 

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the San Fermin Festival was cancelled in 2020 and 2021, but resumed in 2022.

We searched YouTube for videos of the festivities and discovered several videos from the event in 2018. The crowd can be heard chanting the same song heard in the viral video in a video uploaded by Northern Spain Travel.

Based on this evidences we can understand that it is an old video of the San Fermin Festival in Pamplona, Spain, and some visual elements match videos from 2018, suggesting that it is from that year.

Conclusion-

Fact Crescendo found the claim made along with the viral video to be False. The video does not show the celebrations in Croatia after their team qualified for the semi final of the FIFA World Cup 2022 but rather an old video of the San Fermin Festival in Pamplona, Spain.

Title:This video does not show the Croatian celebrations at the FIFA World Cup 2022 

Fact Check By: Usha Manoj 

Result: False