Spain: Six were slightly injured during the first release of the San Fermin bulls

Six people were slightly injured on Friday during the first race of Pamplona’s famous San Fermin festival, which draws tourists from all over the world to this northern Spanish city every year, the Red Cross said.

“Six people have been taken,” Jose Aldaba, a spokesman for the organization, told Spanish public television. He explained that these injuries “do not appear serious”, referring to “bruises” on the face, arms or legs.

During these festivities, which take place every year from 6 to 15 July, hundreds of daring runners, dressed in a white T-shirt or T-shirt and a red sash, try every morning at 8 am (6 am GMT), for eight days, to get as close as they can of six fighting bulls during an 850-meter race through the city’s narrow cobbled streets.

Immortalized by Ernest Hemingway in 1926 in his novel The Sun Also Rises, San Fermin festivities attract tourists from all over the world.

The release of bulls (“encierros”) causes dozens of injuries and sometimes deaths there each year.

Since 1911, when the data began being compiled, at least 16 runners have died. The last fatality was in 2009 when a 27-year-old Spaniard was gored by a bull.