The Running of the Bulls (in Spanish: encierro, from the verb encerrar, “to corral, to enclose”) is a practice that involves running in front of a small group of cattle, typically six, of the toro bravo breed that have been let loose on a course of a sectioned-off subset of a town’s streets.
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A wild cow jumps over revelers in the bullring after the first running of the bulls at the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, northern Spain, July 7, 2016.
Last month’s general election saw an animal rights party win a record number of votes in Spain as almost 285,000 people cast their ballot for PACMA – or 1.2 percent of all votes.
Several of the six bulls used in the run got separated from the pack moments into the 8 a.m. run and began charging whatever came in sight.
A participant lies on the ground after being hurled by a Jose Escolar Gil’s fighting bull on the third day of the San Fermin bull run festival in Pamplona, northern Spain on July 9, 2016.
Five people were hurt, including one seriously, at Spain’s famed San Fermin bull-running festival, also marred by five arrests over allegations of sexual assault, authorities said Thursday. The bulls later face nearly certain death in afternoon bullfights.
A 58-year-old Spaniard identified only by the initials F.L.R., a 73-year-old South African man identified as M.H.O., and a Canadian aged 48 with the initials P.C.O., were in serious condition after being gored, a government statement said.
But the man was lucky to escape with the minor injuries with five people gored in the run, including two horned in the stomach and another three gored in the legs and arms.
The slippery road linking the holding pens for the bulls to the Pamplona bullring, which is about 900m long, and the large number of participants at the weekend made Saturday’s running more unsafe.
The nationality of the suspects was not clear but a protest march against the assault was planned for Thursday evening.
Ten people, including four Americans, were gored in last year’s festival.
The festival became famous after Ernest Hemingway’s 1920 novel “The Sun Also Rises” and attracts thousands of foreign tourists each year.
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Over the past century 15 people have died in Pamplona’s event, which dates back hundreds of years, according to a count on the unofficial San Fermin website.
