Parading through Pamplona
People gather around a giant figure on parade Sunday during the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, Spain. The nine-day celebration includes the daily running of the bulls, which began Sunday and resulted in injuries for five people, including two Americans who were gored.
PAMPLONA, Spain — Five people were hospitalized after the opening bull run of this year’s San Fermin festival in Pamplona, including two Americans and a Spaniard who were gored by bulls, officials in the northern Spanish city said Sunday.
A 46-year-old man from San Francisco was gored in the neck in the city’s bullring, at the end of the 930-yard course. His injuries required surgery, the regional government reported.
A 23-year-old man from Florence, Ky., and a 40-year-old Spanish man were both gored in the thigh. Two young Spanish men suffered head injuries.
The running of the bulls in Pamplona draws about 1 million spectators every year. During the nine-day San Fermin fiesta, six bulls are run every morning in the city’s narrow streets and then killed in afternoon bullfights.
Hundreds of runners race ahead of or next to the bulls, while the more risk-averse watch from balconies. Some Americans go to Pamplona to follow in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway, who immortalized the Pamplona festival in his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises.
The first run of this year’s festival featured bulls from the Puerto de San Lorenzo cattle breeder.
The pack dashed together along the cobblestoned, barricaded street course. Toward the end, one of the bulls stumbled briefly, causing panic and at least one goring when it resumed the race and charged at some of the racers.
The local Red Cross said emergency personnel attended to 48 people with less serious or minor injuries, including two who were trampled by the racing bulls.
The run, which lasted 2 minutes and 41 seconds, came after the festival’s official opening — or “Chupinazo” — on Friday, a party attended by tens of thousands of people.