The Deadly Tradition of Bull-Running

 

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You must be 18 or older to participate in the bull run. The following actions are prohibited: 

• Crossing police barriers in place along the bull run route
• Standing in areas along the course that have been prohibited by the local police force.
• Participating in the bull run while intoxicated, while under the influence of drugs, or in any other way that is deemed to be improper.
• Carrying any objects that may interfere with the event
• Wearing inappropriate footwear or clothes 
• Provoking the bulls or intentionally drawing their attention at any point along the run route
• Running backwards or running behind the bulls
• Harassing the bulls, holding them, or barring them from running or completing the course
• Jeopardizing other runners by ceasing to run, standing on or by the fence, or stopping in doorways or by barriers.
• Taking videos or photos during the run without prior official permission

A bull in Denia, Spain, charges a participant in the running of the bulls on July 17, 2022.

Zowy Voeten via Getty Images

 

At the traditional Pamplona San Fermin running of he bulls the event takes first pize as Spain's primary bull-running festival event. No death has  taken place there in 13 years. But there are regional bull-running events staged annually, festivals beloved by locals and which attract visitors drawn to the romantic ideal of the bull-running. The Pamplona San Fermin staging was immortalized by Ernest Hemingway in his 1926 novel "The Sun Also Rises". 

It's been a somewhat different story, however, in other traditional bull-run summer festivals this year, with a total of eight spectator/participant deaths. The adrenalin rushes in fearful excitement as participants take part in this show of male dominance over a powerful beast taunted and confused and reacting as any animal would in self-protection imprinted by its genetic code as survival. People who answer the call to danger tend often to believe they're invulnerable.

This year's events with three goring deaths in a single day, demonstrating the wholesale foolhardiness of strutting, capering, festival bull-runners feeling they can outrun a bull that has been exposed to a chaotic experience it cannot understand, surrounded by jeering, cheering and running people challenging it to react. And it does react in the only way feasible for such an animal. 

 

A reveller tempts a bull during a running of the bull festival in the village of Atanzon, central Spain (Bernat Armangue/AP)

 

Spanish towns ring with the shrieks of excited bull runners as bulls charge through the streets. The runners imagining themselves the featured matador, fearless, skilled, energetic and successful. Rarely imagining themselves gored, helplessly ground by a piercing horn into the ground, bleeding to death from mass trauma. There is created, across the nation accustomed to these events, festivals taking place right across the country in every tradition-respecting town and village.

Revellers on foot and on horseback run with rampaging animals. A 73-year-old French woman who regularly attended these events was gored in the chest in an eastern Spanish town. In other Valencia festivals six men were fatally gored. A week ago a steer gored a 60-year-old man to death. The numbers of bull-running participants who have been injured, some seriously, amounted to 380. And the festival season has yet another two months before it is concluded.

 

A bull roams around a square as revellers tempt him in Atanzon (Bernat Armangue/AP)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Deputy President Altana Mas, of the Valencia regional government, is open to debate whether it is time to prohibit fiestas of this nature, acknowledging that current legislation is "not enough". A few villages hve taken the initiative to cancel bull-running festivals. "I hope our decision brings further into the streets the debate and leads to the end of this tradition", commented Tavernes de la Validigna Mayor Sergi Gonzales, in defiance of the festival's deep cultural roots.