logo
Daredevils are thrown into the air and smashed by bull as first person is gored by bull in this year's Running of the Bulls festival in Spain

Daredevils are thrown into the air and smashed by bull as first person is gored by bull in this year's Running of the Bulls festival in Spain

Daily Mail​08-07-2025
Spain 's famous Running of the Bulls festival saw its first gore injury this morning as five people were taken to hospital.
A fighting bull which became separated from the rest of the pack caused chaos and panic among revellers.
The 575 kilo (90 stone) animal called Caminante, or 'Walker', lifted one runner into the air and smashed him down onto the tarmac of Pamplona's old town on his head.
At one point it even turned on one of the ranchers trying to guide it towards pens in the bullring at the end of the half-mile course.
Towards the finish it appeared to dig its horns into the stomach one of the six steers that accompany the six fighting bulls on each of the eight morning runs, narrowly missing a reveller in traditional festival attire who was sprawled helpless on his back.
Today's drama during the second morning run, known in Spanish as an encierro, meant it was five minutes and 22 seconds before Caminante reached the end of the course.
The last of the bulls to finish yesterday took just over two and a half minutes to finish.
In an initial casualty round-up moments after the end of the day two encierro, a Red Cross official confirmed one person had suffered a gore wound and had been among five people taken to hospital.
It was not immediately clear how bad the injury was although the victim is said to have been gored in the arm.
One participant speaking after the event said: 'It was panic out there today. It's a miracle if only one person ended up getting gored. It could have been into double figures.'
The bulls that starred in today's run were from the Cebada Gago ranch in the province of Cadiz and have a reputation for being the most dangerous.
Caminante was the second heaviest of the six fighting bulls that took part, with another called Lioso weighing in at a whopping 580 kilos (just over 91 stone).
Yesterday five people were rushed to hospital after being injured during the first encierro, all men from Spain aged 21 to 49.
One suffered a serious chest trauma injury and was left with multiple rib fractures.
The famous festival in the northern Spanish town, popularly known as the Sanfermines, kicked off at midday on Sunday with the traditional opening ceremony called the Chupinazo.
Thousands of revellers dressed in the must-wear white outfits with a red bandana around their necks ending up soaked in wine and sangria.
The San Fermin festival runs until 14 July 2025
Sixteen people have been killed during the bull runs at the annual festival, which finishes on July 14 and was made famous by 1926 Ernest Hemingway novel 'The Sun Also Rises', since records began in 1910.
The most recent death was in 2009 when 27-year-old Daniel Jimeno, from Madrid, was gored in the neck by a bull called Capuchino.
Several foreigners, from Australians to Americans through to Brits and Irish, are normally among the injured.
The first of the eight encierros last year took place four hours after a San Fermin reveller collapsed and died.
Police rushed to the scene and tried to save the 40-year-old man but were unable to resuscitate him.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Lamine Yamal faces legal action over dwarfism row at 18th birthday party
Lamine Yamal faces legal action over dwarfism row at 18th birthday party

The Independent

time15-07-2025

  • The Independent

Lamine Yamal faces legal action over dwarfism row at 18th birthday party

A Spanish disability rights group has vowed legal action over the reported hiring of people with dwarfism as entertainment at Barcelona star Lamine Yamal 's recent 18th birthday party, condemning the practice as discriminatory. The young winger, who helped Spain clinch the European Championship last year, celebrated his coming of age on Saturday with a star-studded jamboree that included celebrity guests from the music industry such as Bizarrap, Bad Gyal or Quevedo, as well as many of his Barca teammates and social media influencers. The Association for People with Achondroplasia and Other Skeletal Dysplasias (ADEE) said in a statement that the use of people with dwarfism as spectacle at Yamal's party perpetuated stereotypes, fuelled discrimination and undermined the dignity and rights of people with disabilities. It cited Spain's disability rights law, which prohibits shows or recreational activities that use people with disabilities in a way that provokes ridicule or undermines their dignity. "It's unacceptable that in the 21st century, people with dwarfism are still used for entertainment at private parties, particularly when public figures are involved," said ADEE President Carolina Puente. "The dignity and rights of our community cannot be a source of amusement under any circumstance." Yamal's representatives did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment, although Spain's Ministry of Social Rights has now asked the country's prosecutor's office to investigate Yamal. Yamal posted on Monday a one-minute video edit with highlights from the party on his Instagram account that featured fellow Barca players Gavi and Robert Lewandowski playing poker and roulette, though it did not appear to show people with achondroplasia, the genetic disorder causing dwarfism. The Spaniard – who won LaLiga, the Copa del Rey and Spanish Supercup with Barca this season – wore a white suit with a red rose in his lapel, lavish jewellery and a cane, in keeping with the party's "Italian gangster" theme. Spanish radio station RAC1 broadcast an interview with someone claiming to be one of the entertainers present at the party who defended Lamine Yamal. "No-one disrespected us, we worked in peace," said the artist, who asked to remain anonymous. "I don't understand why there's so much hype. We're normal people, who do what we want, in an absolutely legal way. "We work as entertainers. Why can't we do it? Because of our physical condition? We know what our limit is and we will never exceed it: we are not fairground monkeys." The performer said it lasted one hour, and afterwards the entertainers joined in with the party. 'We dance, we distribute drinks, we do magic... there are many types of shows. Everyone had a great time.'

Women fear men more than bulls 50 years after joining Pamplona
Women fear men more than bulls 50 years after joining Pamplona

Times

time14-07-2025

  • Times

Women fear men more than bulls 50 years after joining Pamplona

It was a July morning in 1975 when a thunder of hooves echoed through Pamplona's old town. Tonnes of muscle and horn came charging around the 90-degree bend towards Estafeta Street, a long and narrow stretch offering nowhere to hide, save for a few doorways. Mariví Mendiburu waited nervously. The 21-year-old had ducked under barricades and stepped on to the cobbled streets of the city's annual bull run route. As people's jogs turned to sprints, one man in the sea of red neckerchiefed runners pointed and protested: 'Hey! A woman!' The ban on women participating in the encierro — the running of the bulls — had been lifted in 1974, but any who tried that year were pushed back behind the barriers. • The opening of San Fermin Festival in Pamplona — and other news in pictures A year later, the dictator Francisco Franco had months to live and one did not need to have an ear to the ground to hear the rumble of change in Spain. 'It was an era of demonstrations, of strikes, of fight,' Mendiburu said. 'There was an atmosphere that things weren't going to be the same.' Unlike her brother, who did bull runs out of an insatiable passion — he did not stop despite having been gored in the chest four times — the young feminist's motivation was purely political. 'The encierro was full of machismo. It was simply to make a statement. To say, 'Oi. We can run too.' ' When Mendiburu and her friend Alicia Rivas ran that year, they waited for the bulls, shielded by a ring of men so that they could not be pulled out of the street. 'If we had gone alone, we definitely wouldn't have managed it,' she said. Fifty years after their pioneering run, spotting a woman in the encierro is still like finding a needle in a haystack. Female runners account for only 6 per cent of the roughly 3,000 that brave the frantic dash on each of the eight mornings of the San Fermín festival, but for them, the front line in the fight for change has shifted from the bull run to the other side of the barricades. During the 2016 celebrations an 18-year-old woman was found on a bench having been gang-raped by five men who called themselves the 'Wolf Pack'. It became a watershed moment for Spanish legislation and placed the festival at the heart of the national debate about sexual violence. It was not, however, the only case of gender-based violence to mar the image of the festival and the thronging crowds and parties that engulf it. In 2008 Nagore Laffage, 20, refused to have sex with a man during the fiesta. He beat her to death. The cases are not isolated, Teresa Sáez Barrao, an activist and ex-parliamentarian, said. 'We had been talking about this problem for years but the institutions would say that it didn't happen during Sanfermines [San Fermín festival].' Now widely acknowledged, many locals lament Pamplona's reputation. 'It's a shame because San Fermín is so much more than that,' said Sara Puñal, who grew up watching the encierro from her grandparents' balcony on Estafeta Street and debuted last year. 'But the people are scarier than the bulls.' Scores of safety initiatives have been implemented in Pamplona: there is an app for reporting attacks; the council has funded improved lighting and surveillance in the city centre; women's groups hold self-defence workshops; partygoers getting night buses can demand a stop anywhere to shorten their walk home; and, as of 2024, bars are plastered with guides on the official protocols to follow in the event of an assault. Information points around town campaign for a 'Pamplona free of sexist assaults'. 'It's true that security has noticeably increased,' Saioa Sagasti, another local runner, said. 'There are more police and that makes you feel safer.' It is questionable, however, whether much has changed. A report by the municipal police after last year's fiesta said that arrests were made for 24 sexual assaults, six of which were classed as 'high intensity': the same category as the Wolf Pack case. Pamplona, capital of Navarre, swells fivefold during the San Fermín festival. 'There's a general idea that from the 6th to the 14th of July in Pamplona there aren't any rules and anything goes,' Sagasti said, echoing the Gen-Z runner Fushan Equiza González's claim that visitors treat it like a 'lawless city'. In The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway gave a vivid account of the festivities: 'The dancing kept up, the drinking kept up … Everything became quite unreal and finally it seemed as though nothing could have any consequences.' Almost a century on, Sagasti said, 'You're more alert and take more care than you would on a normal night.' The encierro evolved over centuries from the practical task of herding bulls towards the bullring into a magnet for thrill-seekers. The three minutes it takes for the six bulls to cover 875 metres are watched live by millions of viewers across Spain, complete with commentary and slow-motion replays. Sixteen men have died since records on the practice began. 'You go into survival mode,' Equiza González said. 'I'm quite small, so for the men, tripping over me is like tripping over a Coca-Cola can.' She doesn't let that quash her enthusiasm. 'You feel like you're part of the history and identity of where you come from — living the city's tradition from the inside. It's very important to people.' For the small percentage of women that participate, there is a perverse sense of equality inside the streets of the run compared with beyond it. 'They really value me and I don't notice any unfavourable treatment or gender differences,' Puñal said. 'At all times I've just felt like one of the rest.' 'In the encierro the reality is that we're all exposed to the same risk,' Equiza González said.

At Pamplona's San Fermín festival, a tiny minority of women run with bulls
At Pamplona's San Fermín festival, a tiny minority of women run with bulls

The Independent

time13-07-2025

  • The Independent

At Pamplona's San Fermín festival, a tiny minority of women run with bulls

Dressed in the traditional bull runner's garb of a white shirt and red neck-scarf, Yomara Martínez, 30, sprinted in the death-defying morning run or 'encierros' taking place this week in the northern Spanish city of Pamplona. Yet despite being in a crowd of thousands, Martínez was among only a handful of women daredevils running with the stampeding bulls at the San Fermín Festival. 'At the end of the day, the bull doesn't know about sexes, age or body shape,' Martinez said. 'It doesn't matter if you are woman.' Every year, thousands of people line the medieval streets of Pamplona to witness the centuries-old tradition of running with bulls. Many watch from balconies and wooden barricades along the course. Millions more follow the spectacle on television. Women bull runners are rare, though Martínez and other women taking part in the adrenaline-fueled tradition as more than mere spectators say it's growing in popularity. 'There are times I feel small. And ask myself 'what am I doing here?' Because, although you may not want to, you do feel slightly inferior because of your physique,' said 32-year-old Sara Puñal, an administrator who took part in Sunday's run. 'But in the moment, you are all equal,' Puñal said of the run. The bulls pound along the twisting cobblestone streets after being led by six steers. Up to 4,000 runners take part in each bull run, which takes place over 846 meters (2,775 feet) and can last two to four minutes. The expert Spanish runners try to sprint just in front of the bull's horns for a few seconds while egging the animal on with a rolled newspaper. Gorings are not rare, but many more people are bruised and injured in falls and pileups with each other. 'I think many have a desire to see what it feels like but they don't try because of fear,' said Paula López, 32, a shop assistant who also took part in a run earlier in the week. López said she grew up in the masculine world of bull fighting. She wasn't fazed by how few women take part in the event. 'It's complicated, but it is pretty exciting,' López said. The event's reputation took a hit years ago following complaints by women about having suffered sexual harassment and abuse from revelers. In 2016, five men raped an 18-year-old woman during the festival in an infamous case that sparked an outcry across Spain. The men, who had a WhatsApp group named 'La Manada,' or 'The Animal Pack,' were imprisoned for 15 years by the Supreme Court in 2019. Since then, organizers have said they've stepped up security measures. Women didn't participate in the bull runs until 1975 due to a decree repealed one year earlier that prohibited women, children and the elderly from being in the streets where the bulls run during the festival. The spectacle was made internationally famous by Ernest Hemingway's classic 1926 novel 'The Sun Also Rises,' about American bohemians wasting away in Europe. —— Naishadham reported from Madrid.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store