After a two-year break, a bull run is taking place again at the San Fermin festival in Spain. Cattle are first rushed through the city and then impaled. The spectacle attracts thousands of tourists. Animal rights activists, however, have had enough of the bloodshed.
In the Basque city of Pamplona, ??after a two-year break due to the corona pandemic, the San Fermin festival with the famous bull run is being celebrated again for the first time. At 12 noon, the traditional “Chupinazo” rocket was fired from the balcony of City Hall to open the nine-day festival. Thousands of people from all over the world celebrated the starting shot with plenty of alcohol.
Numerous animal rights activists, dressed as dinosaurs, demonstrated against the event, which dates back to the Middle Ages, held up signs with the message: “Bullfights are prehistoric” and yelled against animal suffering through loudspeakers.
In addition to bullfights, the festival also includes religious processions, concerts and nightly drinking. The highlights are the daily tests of courage when running through the historic old town while fleeing fighting bulls with sharp horns. Hundreds of volunteers embark on the 850-meter route.
Driving the bulls is torture for the cattle. The animals are chased through the city to the bullring. During the drive, the bulls often slip in the narrow streets and sometimes suffer serious injuries, as Peta criticizes. In the arena, several toreros then pounce on the animals, where they kill them in a bloody fight.
Every year there are also dozens of injured participants. They mainly injure themselves from falls or from being trampled on by cops. The last fatality was in 2009 when a bull impaled a Spaniard in the neck, heart and lungs.
The San Fermin celebration became known worldwide in 1926 through a novel by Ernest Hemingway. The cancellations due to the Corona epidemic in 2020 and 2021 were the first since the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. Bullfighting has a long tradition in Spain. In Catalonia it was allowed again after a ban by the Spanish constitutional court. The reason: It is about Spanish culture.
