Navarra’s summer script repeats itself unchanged and punctually in Pamplona, where the official opening of the San Fermin festival kicked off the first of the nine encierros – the crazy bull races – scheduled in the city calendar. Under a relentless sun, barely mitigated by the traditional white dresses and red handkerchiefs around the necks of the participants, hundreds of runners poured along the 850 meters of cobbled alleys of the historic center.
The first budget is already heavy
The outcome of the first day is clear: five people were injured in the crowd near the animals. According to official data released by Fernando Dominguez, the region’s health councilor, three of those injured required immediate hospitalization due to head trauma and deep injuries to their limbs. The six fighting cattle, coming from the well-known Fuente Ymbro herd, darted compactly and quickly through the crowd, miraculously saving those present from goring wounds, but raising the usual wave of panic and disastrous collective falls.
To stem the risks of an intrinsically dangerous event, the Municipality had to deploy a real medical war machine: 17 emergency stations and 16 ambulances located along the route, ready to intervene on the approximately 12,500 tourists who arrived on site. An enormous deployment of public forces, made even more critical by the onset of an orange level weather alert for the heat, which prompted local authorities to launch appeals to avoid sun exposure and alcohol abuse.
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An anachronistic barbarism passed off as cultural identity
Behind the numbers of tourist flows and the adrenaline of viral videos, however, hides a speculative reality that contemporary sensitivity can no longer tolerate: the bullfight is an obsolete and profoundly violent tradition, a medieval relic that causes unnecessary suffering to both human beings and animals.
Forcing cattle to run in terror, sliding on the city asphalt amid the screams of an agitated crowd, represents a form of gratuitous and unjustifiable cruelty disguised as folklore. The dignity of animals is trampled upon for the momentary thrill of a mass of unconscious people, willing to risk their own lives and those of others in the name of an anachronistic rite of courage.
It is unacceptable that in 2026 a public administration must mobilize dozens of health facilities and emergency vehicles to manage the direct consequences of a high-risk game. The rhetoric of the party can no longer act as a cover for a demonstration that undermines collective security and promotes a model of entertainment based on danger and mistreatment. This brutal spectacle, which annually fills the wards of Spanish hospitals, must be stopped definitively to make room for forms of tourism that are ethical, civil and respectful of life in all its forms.
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