20 September, 2007

Bulls Run In More Cities Than Pamplona

Most everyone has heard of the running of the bulls in Pamplona, made famous by Hemingway, but it turns out lots of cities in Spain have their own bull running festivals! We didnt know that but some friends here in Madrid seem to have the secret code to what's going on in Madrid and told us about "el encierro" (running of the bulls but literally "the enclosure") about a 30 minutes from here in San Sebastian del Rey. So we got up at 6am and drove to SSdR.

The whole festival is a week long event and when we went on Saturday, most of the people looked like they had been up most of the night already.

Running in front of six bulls sounds like it shouldn't be that hard...that's wrong. The course has several turns, the bulls are FAST and not every one is sober! Take a look at this video (the whole thing is over in 2 minutes) and watch for when the bulls speed up in the first turn, slam into the fence and then see the fear in some of the runners faces.

Definitely something I plan to do before coming back to the US.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ok, 1st, the video about made me ill. That's just crazy! 2nd, YOU are insane if you're going to do it. I can only imagine the immense pleasure of a bull horn ramming right up your....well, you get my drift :-)

XoXo from Texas,
Aimee

rpm said...

The only thing crazier than running 100 miles is running with a bunch of bulls. Stick to the ultras and leave the bulls to the drunk Spaniards!!

Say hi to Becca for me
Rich