Thousands of thrill seekers yesterday took part in the first running of the bulls at the San Fermin festival in the northern Spanish city of Pamplona.
Several runners took knocks and hard falls at the 8am event, but no one was gored by the beasts, a frequent feature of the spectacle.
The festival attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists. Nearly 1.7 million people visited Pamplona for the celebrations last year, and forecasts are higher for this year with all COVID-19 constraints ended.
Photo: AFP
In the run, six bulls guided by six tame oxen charged along a route through Pamplona’s streets for about two minutes and 30 seconds before reaching the bull ring.
The festival was made famous by Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises. This year marks the 100th anniversary of Hemingway’s first visit to the festival.
Yesterday’s run was the first of eight scheduled. The rest of the day usually includes massive sessions of drinking, eating and attending cultural events.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Four runners were gored in the festival last year. Sixteen people have died in bull runs since 1910, most recently in 2009.
The bulls that run each morning are killed in the afternoon by professional bullfighters.
Animal rights activists annually campaign against the festival, claiming it is cruel to animals.
Destino Navarra, an official tour guide group, said that visitors from the US and Canada represent 70 percent of its total bookings for this year’s festival.
Expert bull runners, mostly locals, try to sprint at full steam just in the front of the bull horns before peeling off at the last second.
The inexperienced, a group that includes most foreigners, do well enough to scramble out of the way, often ending up in piles of fellow runners.
Almost everyone in Pamplona wears the traditional white shirt and pants with red sash and neckerchief during the colorful festival.
‘REGRETTABLE’: Beijing pressuring countries to avoid Swiss peace talks was ‘basically support of war,’ Zelenskiy said, as he urged defense ministers to attend the summit Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy yesterday said that China was helping Russia to disrupt an upcoming Swiss-organized peace conference on the war in Ukraine. Speaking at Asia’s premier security and defense conference, Zelenskiy said that China is pressuring other countries and their leaders not to attend the upcoming talks. He did not say which ones. “Russia, using Chinese influence in the region, using Chinese diplomats also, does everything to disrupt the peace summit,” he told a news conference at the Shangri-La Dialogue forum. “Regrettably this is unfortunate that such a big independent powerful country as China is an instrument in the hands of [Russian
CARTEL INFLUENCE: In the run-up to today’s election, gangs have taken to firing on campaign rallies, burning ballots and even setting up banners to influence voters Mexico’s election is now the bloodiest in its modern history after a candidate running for local office in central Puebla state was murdered on Friday at a political rally, taking the number of assassinated candidates to 37 ahead of today’s vote. Jorge Huerta Cabrera, a candidate who was running for a council seat in the town of Izucar de Matamoros, was gunned down in the attack, the state prosecutor’s office said. Huerta Cabrera’s wife and one of his colleagues were wounded in the attack, authorities said. He was a candidate for the Green Party, an ally of the governing Morena party. “His life was
TIANANMEN SQUARE ANNIVERSARY: Eight people have been accused of publishing ‘seditious’ online posts to ‘take advantage of an upcoming sensitive day’ Hong Kong police yesterday arrested an eighth person over social media posts about commemorating Beijing’s 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, the eve of the bloody incident’s 35th anniversary. The arrest was the latest in a series of law enforcement actions taken since Tuesday last week against a group that was accused of publishing “seditious” online posts to “take advantage of an upcoming sensitive day.” The group was the first detained under Hong Kong’s Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, the territory’s second national security law enacted in March following another security law imposed by Beijing in 2020. Police said the eighth person arrested was a 62-year-old
The clip shows people rushing to help an older woman knocked over by one of the many stray dogs on Istanbul’s streets. It is the kind of canine run-in that plays continuously on Turkey’s social media. The anger these clips spark is part of a growing furor pitting Turks who have lost patience with aggressive strays against people sympathetic to the homeless dogs’ plight. Fed up with attacks by stray hounds, campaigners have convinced the government to draw up legislation aimed at curbing the number of strays. “We want streets without dogs” is one popular slogan. However, the plan has provoked an outcry from