Six Injured, One Gored In Annual Bull Run In Pamplona Spain
By
OSABUOHIEN VIVIAN ROSE
The San Fermin festival began on Sunday in the northern city of Pamplona in Spain. Huge crowds turned up for the first bull run but animal rights groups have long campaigned against the event.
Six people have been injured on the first day of an annual bull run in Spain.
This included a 54-year-old American from New York, who was one of five people hurt from what was said to be knocks.
Along with that, a 37-year-old Spanish man was gored by a bull, according to the local government from Navarre.
Each year, the San Fermin festival in the northern Spanish town of Pamplona attracts tourists from across the world.
The celebrations take place in July and are best known for the bull runs that take place in the morning.
At 8am, the ‘encierro’, bull runs, involve hundreds of people running from six bulls and six tame oxen through the streets of the town over a half-mile course.
It’s a huge attraction to tourists from across the world, with nearly 1.7 million people said to have visited Pamplona in 2022 for the celebration.
The bulls that run each morning are killed in the afternoon by bullfighters.
Animal rights activists annually campaign against the festival, warning it is cruel to the animals made to take part.
Ahead of this year’s festival, PETA and AnimaNaturalis protested in the Plaza Consistorial wearing bull horns and covered in fake blood.
The festival was made famous for many English speakers by Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises.
In 2023 the only injuries were knocks, but the year before that four runners were gored during the celebrations and 16 people have died since 1910 – the most recent in 2009.
Destino Navarra, an official tour guide group, said visitors from the US and Canada represented 70% of their total bookings last year.
While expert bull runners, mostly locals, try to sprint just in front of the bull’s horns before jumping out of the way at the last second, more inexperienced runners, often tourists, do their best to just keep out of the animals’ paths altogether.
Almost everyone in Pamplona wears the traditional white shirt and pants with red sash and neckerchief during the colourful festival.
The origins of the festival are said to date far back centuries and reflect the historic practice of moving the bulls from fields outside the city, where they were bred, to the bullring.
