An 86-year-old British man is among 57 people injured while taking part in the running of the bulls festival in the northern Spanish city of Pamplona.
The man, from Halesowen in the West Midlands, was taken to hospital on Tuesday – the last morning of the eight-day annual event – after suffering injuries to his right hand, left elbow and right eyebrow. A spokesperson for the festival said the man, who has not been named, was being assessed by doctors but not thought to be badly hurt.
The annual festival, which draws participants from all over the world, offers humans a chance to test their mettle by racing through the narrow streets of Pamplona ahead of a pack of bulls. Each run, or encierro, begins at 8am when participants dressed in white with red neckerchiefs sprint ahead of six bulls over the 848.6-metre course that leads from a holding pen to the city’s bullring.
Two Spaniards were gored on the final day of the festival, which is known in Spain as Sanfermines after Saint Fermin, the co-patron saint of the Navarra region where the festivities take place. An 18-year-old local man was gored in the left thigh, while a 46-year-old man from Guadalajara in central Spain suffered a horn to the chest. Neither was gravely hurt.
While trampling injuries and gorings are more common, at least 16 deaths have occurred during runs over the past 116 years. The last person to die at the festival was Daniel Jimeno Romero, a 27-old participant from Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid, who was fatally gored in the neck and lung in 2009.
The festival was immortalised in Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, which tells the story of a boozy bunch of American and British expats who come to Pamplona for the festival and think it fine and beautiful and good.