During the San Fermin festivities in Pamplona, 52 people were hospitalized in the city hospital, including a Frenchman. This traditional festival ends this Thursday in Spain.
The San Fermin festivities in Pamplona (northern Spain) end on Thursday after a week punctuated by the release of daily bulls, which will have sent 52 participants to the hospital, including five gored people, but none seriously.
Every day at 8 a.m., hundreds of daring runners, wearing white shirts or t-shirts and red scarves, try to get as close as possible to six fighting bulls in an 850-meter race in the narrow cobbled streets of the city, which for the occasion attracts tourists from all over the world.
The latest run, Thursday morning, which lasted just over two minutes, sent six men to hospital, regional authorities said in a statement. This brings the total of people treated at the hospital to 52, including three Americans and a Frenchman.
While most of the injuries were bruises, broken bones or cuts from falls, five men were still gored.
Two of them are still hospitalized in Pamplona.
Immortalized in 1926 by Ernest Hemingway in his novel “The Sun Also Rises”, the releases of bulls (“encierros”) of San Fermin each year cause dozens of injuries and sometimes deaths.
In the last edition held in 2019, before two years of cancellations in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic, eight people were gored.
Since 1911, when data began to be compiled, at least 16 runners have died.
The last death dates back to 2009 when a bull gored a 27-year-old Spaniard, whose parents laid a bouquet of flowers in his honor on the course on Sunday, on the thirteenth anniversary of his death.