San Fermin Bulls Running Festival In Pamplona

The San Fermin festival in northern Spain, held since 1591, attracts tens of thousands of foreign visitors each year for nine days of revelry, bull runs and bullfights. The bulls are released on to the streets each morning and hundreds of people are chased along an 825-metre course leading to the arenas where bullfights are staged in the afternoons.

The event begins at 8 a.m. when a first firecracker is lit to announce the release of the bulls from their corral. Runners gather earlier at the beginning of the itinerary to ask for the protection of the Saint by singing a chant three times before a small statue of San Fermin which has been placed in a raised niche in a wall. A second cracker signals that the last bull has left the corral. The run ends in the Pamplona's bullring taking a mean time of around 3 minutes where the bulls would be held until the afternoons bullfight when they would be killed. Once all of the bulls have entered the arena, a third rocket is released while a fourth firecracker indicates that the bulls are in their bullpens and the run has concluded.