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Running of the bulls in Pamplona: animals running through streets
Photo: Alvaro Barrientos/AP
At the end of the traditional and controversial bull race of the "Sanfermines" festival, six runners were seriously injured in Spain.
The eighth and final race of the year in Pamplona lasted little more than two minutes.
One man was taken by the horns by a bull and five others had to be treated in hospital with bruises or broken bones.
A total of five people were speared by bulls this year and suffered injuries including buttocks and genitals. 52 had to be treated in hospital, sometimes for several days.
The festival in honor of the city saint San Fermín took place for the first time since 2019.
It was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the corona pandemic - for the first time since the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.
The festival goes back to medieval traditions.
The bull hunt is broadcast live by several broadcasters.
On a total of eight days, six fighting bulls, some of them weighing more than 600 kilograms, and several tame lead oxen ran through the narrow streets of the 850 meter long path from a pen to the bullring in the early morning.
There they are later killed in a bullfight.
Hundreds of people take part in the runs;
dozens of people are injured and sometimes dead every year.
»Bullfighting is prehistoric«
Animal rights activists are not worried about the runners, but about the bulls.
Also this year they protested against the event, which is meanwhile also controversial in Spain.
Activists carried placards reading "Bullfighting is prehistoric."
According to animal rights activists, the bulls are tortured by the hunt.
And that's not all: in the evenings they are killed by toreros during bullfights in the arena to the cheers of the spectators.
Despite this, the festival continues to attract crowds of tourists from all over the world, particularly Europe, Australia and the USA.
According to initial estimates, the 200,000-inhabitant city of Pamplona was visited by a million people from home and abroad on the occasion of this year's »Sanfermines«.
A total of 16 people have died since data collection began in 1911.
The last fatality was in 2009, a 27-year-old Spaniard.
His parents laid flowers along the route of the bull hunt on Sunday, the 13th anniversary of his death.
mgo/AFP/dpa
