Running with the Bulls

Front page, Diario de Navarra

The bulls from the Cebada Gago ranch in the southern Spanish province of Cadiz have a nasty reputation in Pamplona, which is saying a lot. Of all the bulls that take to the streets each year in the Sanfermines running of the bulls, the brutes from Cebada Gago are known for goring the runners with their long, pointed horns – something I didn’t know when I stepped into the street on Thursday, the day they would release the Cebada Gaga brutes for their race to the bullring through the streets of Pamplona.

A race to the death, sadly. Among the thousands of partiers who descend on Pamplona each July from around the world for this week of revelry, many have no idea that the bulls running through the streets in the morning will meet death in the afternoon, as Hemingway wrote.

Hemingway wrote plenty about the running of the bulls, and although it’s not exactly clear to me if he himself ever ran with them, he certainly popularized the festival and created the spectacle of daredevilry and drinking that is today’s Sanfermines. So in his honor, in order to follow in his footsteps, I feel like I have to run here, whether he ran or not.

As I step into the street below the church where the 8 a.m. bells signal the start of the running, I can’t resist the feeling that Hemingway is looking down on me. I don’t mean that spiritually. I mean there is a guy on the balcony above focusing his Nikon at me who is a better lookalike than a lot of the lookalikes I’ve seen.

Somewhere down the street, the bulls in the corrals are waiting for a chaos they cannot imagine from their lives of pastoral rumination. The six largest, which are bound for the afternoon bullfight, all way well over a ton. The smallest is Cabrero, a white bull speckled with black spots like a Dalmatian, weighing in at 1,135 pounds. The two biggest, dark brown Andador and black Aplicado, are each 1,323 pounds. In between are Estafeta, Asustado, and Amado, whose name means “beloved” and whose color is described as peach.

All of them are armed with long, curving horns that would do a lot of damage if they pierced an internal organ, and whose weights make it unpleasant to consider the notion of them stepping on or rolling on top of me, all of which are possibilities and the exact sort of thing I’m trying to avoid thinking about while I wait for the two shots of fireworks that start the bulls running.

With people stretching and checking their watches, it looks like it could be any race about to take part in the street, but it’s not. This one is over in a few minutes, and no matter how fast you are, you can’t win. The bulls will outrun the fastest sprinter, especially if they have hundreds of people cramming the road in front of them.

For the bulls, it’s all over in three minutes or so. For the spectators not watching on TV, the bulls rush by in a blur of a few seconds. For the runners, it’s a few seconds of adrenaline and fear. Unless something horrible happens, as it often does, the bulls will pass on their way to terrify another group of runners.

I’m in a spot called Santo Domingo, close to the start of the course. It’s considered one of the more dangerous sections. It’s a sheer straightaway. No doorways to duck into. No wide spots to get out of the way. The bulls start out of the gates fast, and the uphill run is a fast one for them, because their front legs are shorter than their back legs.

Just past Calle de Mercederes, the bulls and runners reach Estafeta, with a dangerous curve that often sends bulls spinning out of control into their human counterparts.

The crowd gathers below the statue of San Fermin, Pamplona’s patron saint, and utters the ritual prayer: “Guide us in the running, giving us your blessing.”

We set off when the rockets fire, and the panic soon begins. If the running of the bulls is meant as a test of courage, it seems mostly to be run by cowards who spend much of the time looking backward horrified to see if the bulls are gaining on them. Eventually they do, and it’s not easy to run looking backwards, especially with a bunch of bulls on your tail.

It’s hard to say why someone would want to do this, given the senseless danger and all, but once the danger passes, it’s hard to say why you wouldn’t want to do it. It is a thrilling moment to be running WITH the bulls – actually beside them – these giant creatures that seem nothing but strength and power as they pass.

That is, if they pass safely beside you. For some, inevitably, they don’t, and the confrontation can be fatal. As we run, I suddenly find myself stopped, pressed up against the crowd in front of me and a wall of cops screaming at us. We soon see why. Behind them, medics are loading a man onto a stretcher ready to haul him away in the ambulance.

“I saw it happen,” a man beside me says. “It was really bloody.”

The Cebada Gago bulls hold the record as the bloodiest bulls at Pamplona, and these lived up to it.  Spaniard Yago Migues Fernandez, 21, was readying to round the curve at Mercederes in his first running of the bulls when the bulls came upon him. He stumbled and was impaled as Amado came behind him, his horn running 10 centimeters into his chest. He crashed onto his head and watched as runners leaped over him.

Eight others were injured, including a 43-year-old British man gored in the leg and a 33-year-old Israeli with a broken leg.  “It wasn’t because of the bulls. It was because of the runners,” he told reporters later. “Here in Pamplona, the biggest danger is the other runners.”

When one runner went down, he triggered a three-bull pileup that left one of the bulls gored.

The carnage continued in the bullring where the fights were put on hold for 10 minutes while 10 matadors were undergoing medical treatment. One nearly had his ear severed – ironic, since bulls’ ears are cut off and collected after fights that are considered especially great.

Estafeta avoided his fate that night. He broke a horn and was substituted out. Panolito took the fall for him.

No matter what licks the bulls get in, though, their fate is always the same. In English we call it a bullfight, and it’s a fight the bull always loses. In Spanish it’s a corrida, a running of the bulls, which is more accurate, really. These bulls never really fight. They are stabbed and bled until they’re weakened, run in circles chasing red capes until their exhausted, then slaughtered.

It’s an unfair fight, and whatever risks the matador faces, the bulls’ risks are greater.

As a runner, though, no killing is involved. It only lasts a moment, but it is a glorious moment, when you are running with the bulls, and they are running with you. You are two very different animals running side by side, and if you don’t do anything stupid, and the guy in front of you doesn’t do anything stupid, you can feel, for a moment, that you’re part of the herd.

This entry was posted on July 9, 2010 at 5:06 pm and is filed under Bullfighting, Spain. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.