Final Pamplona bull run ends without major injuries
Thousands of adrenalin-fuelled revellers took part in the final bull run of the year today at the annual San Fermin festival at Pamplona in Spain, and though many tripped, fell and were trampled, no one was gored.
The run featured the bulls of the previously untried Vitorino Martin stable. The bulls ran the streets to the bull ring in the centre of town, in two minutes 15 seconds, the fastest time of the year.
Two people, a 23 year-old woman from Argentina and a 40 year-old Spanish man, were taken to hospital suffering from multiple bruises at the end of the run.
In the frenzy, even Vitorino Martin’s son was injured, spraining an ankle, the San Fermin information service said. He had been acting as a bull herder at the rear of the pack, a task only the bravest and most experienced dare take on.
Others, dressed in white and red, wearing bright red bandanas tied round their necks, attempt to run alongside the bulls for as long as they dare, often ending up in crumpled heaps on the ground or pressed against the street walls as the rest of the crowd – and the bulls – charge past them.
Surviving unscathed, having run with and even touched the bulls with rolled-up newspapers, is the aim of the dare.
The festival in the northern Spanish city, known for its virtual non-stop street parties, dates back to the late 16th century, though its roots reach back to the era when Spain was first Christianised.
It gained worldwide fame after appearing in Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises.
Since then it has attracted tens of thousands of foreigners, mostly Australians, Britons and North Americans, each year.
This year, Pamplona’s 200,000 population swelled to about two million during the main weekend of the festival, city officials said.
Later today, 204 hours of almost continual partying will come to an end with the crowd singing, as American novelist Ernest Hemingway once did: Woe is me, the San Fermin festival is over. Still, there’s now just a bit less to wait till the next one!
