Bull runs loved by Hemingway turn bloody in Spain (News Feature)

By Sinikka Tarvainen Jul 14, 2009, 11:37 GMT

Pamplona/Madrid - Every July, Spain's renowned Saint Fermin bull festival begins with the firing of a rocket from the balcony of the Pamplona city hall while locals and tourists cheer and spray champagne.

The following morning, half a dozen fighting bulls are let loose in the narrow streets of the old city centre, where they are awaited by up to 2,000 men, dressed in red and white in honour of the city's patron saint.

Armed with nothing but folded newspapers, the 'mozos' run alongside the animals weighing up to 700 kilograms, trying to steer clear of their formidable horns as they make an 850-metre dash to the local bullring.

This year, however, the joyful image of the eight-day bull runs changed.

Media images of young daredevils running high on the thrill of defying death were replaced with those of men lying on the ground, struggling to push off horns and bleeding profusely.

This year, 27-year-old Daniel Jimeno became the first fatality claimed by the bull runs since 2003.

The festival in the northern Spanish city was made famous by Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, and draws hundreds of thousands of tourists for a week-long spree of partying, cultural activities, drinking and bulls.

The bulls that run in the morning are killed in evening bullfights.

This year's eight bull runs caused injuries to 446 people, 8 of whom sustained serious injuries, according to figures released after the last bull run on Tuesday.

Most of the injuries are not caused by bull horns, but by runners falling, getting knocked over or run over by the animals.

Fatalities, however, are rare, and Spaniards were shocked by the fatal goring of Jimeno on Friday.

Many see inexperienced foreigners as the likeliest to get hurt, but Jimeno was a veteran runner.

He was the first fatality claimed by the bull runs since 2003, when another, 63-year-old Spaniard was trampled to death.

The death toll is now running at 15 since record-keeping began in 1924. The victims included a Mexican and a US citizen.

Jimeno's death sparked demands for tougher safety measures, with the daily El Mundo calling for limits on the number of runners and escape exits for runners cornered by stray bulls.

Many Spanish villages staged similar spectacles, which are rooted in the country's bullfighting tradition, in 'minimal' security conditions, the daily complained.

Other observers, however, argued that no precautions could eliminate the element of danger which was the whole point of the Pamplona bull runs.

The runners, almost all of whom are men, were seeking the 'mystical ... ecstasy' of an ancient ritual giving men a 'heroic dimension,' author Fernando Sanchez Drago wrote.

Such comments echoed Hemingway, who extolled bullfighting as the only art in which the artist risks his life.

At the same time, however, Jimeno's death began to raise questions about the appropriateness of such spectacles in the country where interest in bullfights is on the decline.

They could even be banned in the north-eastern region of Catalonia, where an anti-bullfighting campaign is mustering increasing support.

Art could not be based on the suffering of animals, novelist Lucia Etxebarria wrote, while her colleague Gustavo Martin Garzo encouraged bull fans to watch them graze peacefully on pasture.

The bull runs were a question of money rather than art, critics said. The Saint Fermin festival was expected to bring in more than 70 million euros (100 million dollars) in tourism earnings this year.

For the time being, however, the debate remained limited, with government spokeswoman Nieves Goicoechea telling El Mundo that the government had more pressing matters on its agenda.

The Pamplona city council, on its side, saw the current safety measures as sufficient, and promised to continue informing bull runners about the risks they were taking.