Chicken Among Bulls

It’s a lot less crowded where I’m standing. But even here in the middle of Calle Santo Domingo there are dozens of people, almost all of them men in their 20s and 30s. I’m nervous. My repeated looks over my shoulder reassure me of one important fact: When the first flare goes off, signaling the bulls’ release from their pen, I should have enough room to run. And run with the bulls I will.

Friends told me I’d be stupid to do this. One remembered an acquaintance who shattered a bone in his arm and had to fly back to the United States loaded up on painkillers. Another texted me an article from the festival’s first day, which described two Americans and a Spaniard being gored—one took a horn to the scrotum.

“You doing this?” he wrote.

“Game-time decision,” I replied.

Now, a few minutes before 8 a.m. on the festival’s eighth day, the metaphorical whistle is about to blow. I briefly consider retreating to the safety of the spectator area, but decide against it. I’d have to live with the cowardice. Besides, I have a solid strategy devised by my Spanish friend Ramón. He has run with the bulls more than 80 times—every morning of the festival for the last 11 years. He runs for the thrill of it. While there are other festivals in northern Spain that celebrate by running different bovine animals through the streets, Pamplona, he says, is the “Super Bowl.” Plus, he adds, “there is no glory in running with cows.”

Pamplona is a pleasant city (population 200,000) at the base of the Pyrenees, about an hour from the French border. It has a beautiful 15th-century cathedral and the world-famous Festival of San Fermín, which most Americans know as the “Running of the Bulls.” But these morning rituals are just a small part of the celebration. There are parades, outdoor concerts, nightly fireworks, food sellers on every street, and, of course, bullfights each evening. That’s how the tradition started: The bulls needed to be moved from one side of town to the bullring a half-mile away on the other.

The festival has grown substantially since Ernest Hemingway put Pamplona on the map in his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises. As in Hemingway’s time, there’s plenty of drinking and occasional fistfights. News stories on sexual assaults at last year’s festival seem to have depressed attendance this year. Locals grouse that it is as safe as ever and that reports of the attacks were overblown.

It’s an open question how much longer festivals like these will last. Bullfighting in Spain is under attack from animal-rights activists, who have succeeded in having it banned in some areas—most notably in all of Catalonia in 2010. A Spanish court overturned the Catalonian ruling that bullfighting is “one more expression of a cultural nature that forms part of the common cultural heritage.” And around Pamplona, it remains popular. Thousands turn out for the early-morning runnings, and they pack the bullring each evening. The anti-bullfighting crowd has begun a tradition of its own: protesting the whole spectacle a day before the festival by parading naked through the town streets—an event known as the “Running of the Nudes.”

The obvious downside to running with bulls, of course, is the chance of injury or death. Having a 1,200-pound bull bear down on you at full speed and impale you with his horn seems a gruesome way to die. There hasn’t been a death since 2009. But runners are gored each year, and dozens more wind up in local hospitals with concussions, broken bones, scrapes, and bruises. The local paper runs short stories each day on the injured. A sampling of the headlines: “I was trying to get off the street when the bull threw me” (46-year-old Spaniard, broken arm); “There were a lot of people at the entrance to the side street” (26-year-old Spaniard, head injury); “I didn’t see that there was still one bull left” (48-year-old Spaniard, head injury); and, my favorite, “I’ve been to six runnings of the bulls and have enjoyed them, except for today” (55-year-old Frenchman, bruised neck and shoulder).

I’m generally not what you would call a risk-taker. I head to bed early. My wife chides me for driving too close to the speed limit on the freeway. I have three kids and a lot to live for.

This is the part where I should wax philosophical about confronting one’s fears and how running down Pamplona’s cobblestone streets would make me a part of something bigger than myself, enveloping me in a centuries-old tradition that captures the complex dance of life and death.

But my reason to run is far simpler. Family rivalry. I have roots in Pamplona: My great-grandmother left the region for America in 1913, and Ramón is the husband of my second cousin, once removed. My dad ran with the bulls, and I have always expected this day would come, like a bizarre rendezvous with destiny. “It’s in your blood,” Ramón tells me. If I could keep that blood from spilling onto the streets, much the better. The odds are in my favor: An estimated 1,500 or more people run each day, but only around a dozen typically end up in hospitals.

Another factor is that my cousin, a San Francisco dentist, ran three years ago to great family acclaim. A photo of him with a bull’s horn just inches from his back made the front page of the local paper. “Incredibly lucky,” Ramón says. My daughters point out that this sounds a lot like peer pressure—something they are always being urged to avoid by their parents. I start to explain the difference and then realize, well, there really isn’t one.

A lot of runners figure they will be fine if they elude the bulls. What they fail to consider, Ramón says, is that because of the crowd in the street, they will not necessarily be free to get away. The other runners are as dangerous as the bulls: They block escape routes, push you down, and run you over before the bulls even arrive. This is why we chose Thursday instead of Friday, the last day of the festival, for my run. Friday happens to be Bastille Day, which means a further influx of French runners from across the border.

Only the bulls run the entire way to the ring, and runners can begin anywhere on the course. Most start in the middle, close to the town’s center, Ramón notes. At the beginning stretch, where I am starting, there tend to be fewer runners, and they are more experienced.

Ramón’s instructions are simple: Stand in the center of the street. When people start running, run. Keep looking back as you go, and bail out when the bulls approach, hopping onto the sidewalk to the right to let them pass. If you fall down, stay down: The worst injuries happen when fallen runners try to stand up and are struck by a bull closing at full speed.

Police walk through the crowd of runners, removing water bottles and bags and looking for those obviously drunk or under 18. An official approaches me and asks increasingly ominous questions: “Did you go to sleep last night? Do you know the risks of running? Do you know that you could die?” As a helicopter hovers overhead, runners sing to a statuette of Fermín, the city’s patron saint. I pace, stretch a little, and size up those around me.

Then, promptly at 8 a.m., the first flare flies overhead. BOOM! The bulls are loose. The runners closer to the front of the course start jumping, then jogging, then sprinting. I start, too, at an easy pace that quickly turns to a sprint. As I run, I keep looking over my shoulder and see a bull in the distance, maybe 50 yards away. That’s good enough. I veer to the right and onto the sidewalk. Maybe 10 to 12 people have beaten me there. I press against them, and another dozen or more press onto the sidewalk behind me. “Ahh,” I think, “human shields.”

In an instant, the pack of bulls has raced by. I’ve accomplished my goal: survival.

Behind me, medics rush into the street. They tend to two men lying on the ground. I learn later that one was gored in the leg, and the other was struck in the stomach. Both are expected to recover. Despite cameras everywhere, I’m never able to find any images of myself running with the bulls. To me, that means I wasn’t really that close to danger. All I can find is footage of me on local TV pacing, arms behind my back, a few minutes before the bulls were released.

Ramón, who began his run closer to the start, comes and finds me, and we exchange thumbs-ups. He has fallen and scraped his elbow but is otherwise fine, as usual. He calls his wife and mother. I text my wife and go find my family, who are sitting too far down the street to have seen me and are relieved I’m okay.

Ramón asks if I want to run again tomorrow. “I think I’m good,” I reply. I tracked my run on a GPS watch. It reads: 0.0 miles, 19 seconds, 3 calories burned. I’ll take it.

Tony Mecia is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.