PAMPLONA, Spain — A tense fifth bull run at Pamplona’s San Fermín Festival on Monday left three people gored, including a man from Sunrise, Florida, and three others with bruises, the Navarra regional government said.
It was the first run with gorings in the festival so far this year. There are three more daily runs before the festival ends Thursday.
The regional government said a 25-year-old runner from Sunrise was gored in the calf in the bullring. The other two gored were Spaniards, one in the ring and one on the street. None was in serious condition.
Earlier festival organizers had said erroneously that the foreigner gored in the ring was Australian.
Three other runners, all Spaniards, were treated for injuries sustained in falls during the run.
Television images showed one bull repeatedly tossing and butting one runner against the wooden barriers on the edge of the ring and then goring another in the back of the leg.
The spectacle lasted just over three minutes as hundreds of runners, mostly men, ran frantically ahead and alongside six fighting bulls as they charged through the cobblestone streets of this northern city. The run finishes at Pamplona’s bullring, where later in the day the bulls are killed by professional bullfighters.
Tens of thousands of visitors come to the Pamplona festival, which was featured in Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel “The Sun Also Rises.” The adrenaline rush of the morning bull run is followed by partying throughout the day and night.
Eight people were gored in 2019, the last festival before a two-year hiatus because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sixteen people have died in Pamplona’s bull runs since 1910, with the last death in 2009.
The world-famous Fiestas de San Fermín, or the San Fermín Festival, runs for nine days every July and draws more than a million visitors a year, according to the festival's website.
"Much more than bull runs, bullfights and unbridled partying, the Fiestas de San Fermín are a time of reflection and respect. From the moment the first rocket is fired on July 6, Pamplona transforms into a buzzing haven of fraternity, happiness and warmth – a place where young and old, religious and secular, modern and ancient unite," it reads.
10 Tampa Bay's Andrea Chu contributed to this report.
