Charging through a day in Pamplona, Spain

updated 5:36 p.m. ET July 6, 2007

Charles Leocha Travel columnist • Profile • E-mail

The world's limited view of the fiesta, broadcast on TV and splashed across newspapers, is the two to three minutes each morning when six fighting bulls and steers run through throngs of anxious runners dressed in the traditional garb of white with red scarves.

Most of the thousands of runners who cram the narrow course that winds between ancient buildings succumb to natural panic. They cringe in doorways and dive over fences to avoid the rampaging herd. But experienced runners dare death by coming as close to the horns of the fighting bulls as possible and then, hopefully, escaping injury by diving to the side at the last instant.

Over 31 years, I have experienced this group adrenaline rush along every cobblestone of the run. I have run toward the bulls as they first step out of the corral onto Calle Santo Domingo, whirling and sprinting for 50 yards through the 15-foot-wide chute in front of the horns before diving to the side.

I've seen a runner only an arm's length from me get caught by a bull, watching in anguished slow motion as he was tossed on the horns and eventually driven through the barricades by the massive animal. I was transfixed as townspeople carried his bloody body to a nearby ambulance.

Running beside my youngest brother, I've been trailing the bulls into the entrance of the bullring when one suddenly stopped and turned around. The ensuing panic was wild. My brother and I leapt to the barricades, clinging for our lives while the bull decided whom to charge.

Obviously there is no logic to this. It may be a form of sensation addiction.

Ambulances and first-aid stations are positioned alongside the barricaded streets and, after the run, do a brisk business. Dozens of runners are injured every day. Over the past 100 years, hundreds have been seriously gored, but only 14 men have been killed by the bulls. Some refer to this as a sport; others, perhaps more accurately, term it simple madness.

No one really knows why the "running" started. Years ago the local butchers were also the men who herded the bulls into the arena from the corrals on the outskirts of town. This herding or running of the bulls down to the arena eventually developed into the exciting spectacle seen every morning from July 7 through the 14th.

The evening bullfights
The bulls that run in the streets each morning perform in the bullfights in the Plaza de Toros that evening. Some of the best bullfighters in Spain come to Pamplona to fight for what has been called the rowdiest bullfighting crowd in the world.

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Many of the spectators, mostly those sitting in the cheap seats under the blazing sun, spend the entire bullfight singing, dancing and spraying each other with bottle after bottle of champagne. They register their displeasure with underperforming toreros by raining seat cushions and the fruit from their sangria buckets down on their heads.

The serious patrons of the fights sit well dressed and clean in the expensive shaded seats reservedly observing what has been called a ballet in blood. Aficionados may tell you they love bullfighting, yet hate what the bull must endure.

The only consolation is that these creatures are allowed to live a bucolic four to five years — a full two to three years longer than their beef-supplying brethren — and they die a "noble" death.

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