Bully for them!

Pamplona beckons as the San Fermin festival is poised to start

THE famous San Fermin ‘bull running’ festival is about to kick off with the ‘Chupinazo’ inaugural firing of a rocket.

People from all across the world will flock to the historic city of Pamplona for the July 7 to July 14 event.

While the running of the bulls and associated bullfights are the most high-profile events, there is much more to the festival than

By Alex Trelinski

that.

The city council organises more than 500 concerts, parties, firework displays and a ‘wine fight’ where merrymakers soaked each other in tinto

Every day at 8am, six fighting bulls along with four oxen run the 825 metre route from the Corrales de Santo Domingo to Pamplona’s Plaza de Toros.

An estimated one million spectators will watch thousands of people run with the bulls over the eight days of the San Fermin Festival. Runners are ticketed and strictly limited to 3,000 per day and, contrary to popular belief, most of the injuries are caused by other humans involved in trampling rather than any incidents with a bull.

Deadly

Although, of course, the bulls can be deadly. Since records started being kept in 1910, 15 people have been killed during the runs - mainly as a result of goring. The last non-Spaniard to die from a goring was an American tourist aged 22 in 1995. Some 200 people, mainly from the Cruz Roja (Red Cross), provide medical services every 50 metres down the route, with 20 ambulances on stand-by which can take people to hospital in less than 10 minutes. The event dates back to the 13th century tradition of transferring bulls from fields outside Pamplona to the bullring where they would be killed in the evening. During that run, youths would jump among them in a display of bravado.

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