Spain: Running of the bulls off to spirited start

By Alyssa McMurtry

MADRID

The annual running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain started this year with four injuries but no one gored, yet always with the flavor of danger in the air as thousands dared to run alongside 1,400 lb. wild bulls.

Hundreds of thousands of visitors have descended on Pamplona, a small northern Spanish city of less than 200,000 whose population can balloon to 1.4 million during the celebrations. The eight-day San Fermin festival is in honor of the city’s patron saint, and while large religious processions take place daily, the free-flowing wine and summertime abandon make this festival markedly hedonistic.

Injuries are common, as more than 15,000 people trip over themselves while fleeing giant running bulls, but no one has died since 2009. Although the festival dates back hundreds of years, since 1910 a total of 16 people (15 Spaniards and one American) have been killed, the majority gored by the bull’s horns, according to the official festival website.

Ernest Hemingway, the Nobel-prize winning American writer, is widely credited for the festival shooting into international fame. Starting in 1923, San Fermin became an obsession for him, and he visited the festival nine times. His novel The Sun Also Rises is based at the frenzied festival.

Now over half of those who run with the bulls tend to come from abroad. Of those, nearly half are from the United States, suggests official data from 2014.

“The day will never come when Pamplona is really capable of admitting the good that Hemingway has done for this town of Pamplona. Here, the foreigners don’t come to colonize us, as happens in other places, but rather to integrate themselves in our fiestas,” said Jerónimo Echagüe, an expert in bull-running and friend of the writer, according to the festival’s website.

This year the city has decided to introduce changes to help control the party.

Pamplona has taken extra security measures to prevent sexual assault with security, cameras, and “no means no” publicity. They have also taken measures to make sure San Fermin doesn’t turn into the European version of America’s “Spring Break.” In response to images from last year of women taking off their shirts amid large crowds, organizers have handed out guides in several languages advising revelers of proper behavior.

The city has also decided to try “pee-resistant paint” to fight the age-old tradition of men urinating on walls, communally creating pungent streams throughout the city. City workers have slathered paint along city walls promising to make urine bounce back and soak the pants or shoes of the culprits.