Three people were gored during the fifth bull run at the San Fermín festival in Pamplona on Monday morning, with three others left with bruises, a Spanish Red Cross spokesman said.
It was the first run with gorings in the festival so far this year. There are three more daily runs before the festival finishes on Thursday.
Red Cross worker José Aldaba told Spanish National Television (RTVE) that one man was gored on the street, while two others were pierced by a bull’s horn inside the bullring at the end of the run.
Please note that sensitive images can be seen in the video link via the RTVE Tweet below. You can also click here to see the full bull run on the RTVE website.
Festival organisers have said that one of the runners gored was Australian and the other two were Spaniards. None was in serious condition.
The TV images show one bull repeatedly tossing and butting one runner against the wooden barriers on the edge of the ring and then goring another in the back of the leg.
The spectacle lasted just over three minutes as hundreds of runners, mostly men, ran frantically ahead and alongside six fighting bulls as they charged through the cobblestone streets of Pamplona.
Three other runners, all Spaniards, were treated for injuries sustained in falls during the run.
The nine-day Pamplona festival was popularised by Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises, and prior to the cancellations during Covid it had last been called off during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.
Thousands of men and women participate in the ‘encierros’, or bull runs, trying to avoid the massive bulls and oxen that thunder along the narrow, twisting, 875-metre course on the cobblestone streets of Pamplona’s old quarter.
Eight people were gored during the 2019 festival. A total of 16 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 have campaigned against the slaughter of the animals, but bullfights are still popular among segments of Spanish society and an integral part of the San Fermín festival.
In April 2020, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) organisation had sent a letter to the mayor of Pamplona, offering the city €250,000 if it agreed to permanently end the bull-running and subsequent bullfights. Here we published an opinion piece (24 April 2020) by Elisa Allen, director of PETA UK: Opinion: why bullfights should stay cancelled after Covid-19
ALSO READ: Activists stage ‘crime scene’ ahead of Pamplona’s running of the bulls.
ALSO READ: Pamplona bull run returns – with six people treated in hospital on first day.
La ganadería Cebada Gago protagoniza un peligroso #Encierro5RTVE.
— RTVE (@rtve) July 11, 2022
Un toro se ha dado la vuelta durante la carrera y ha provocado varias caídas. Dentro de la plaza, otro de los astados ha embestido a un mozo https://t.co/Ksrqm5tp5V pic.twitter.com/TqOCp7uvWx
🔻🐂 Estos han sido algunos de momentos del quinto encierro de los #Sanfermines2022 pic.twitter.com/IL74Nz4UPs
— SanferminesPamplona (@SFesPamplona) July 11, 2022
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