57 Fun Facts About Running of the Bulls

At what time each morning does the Pamplona bull run begin?

8 a.m. is when the starting rocket goes up, but the run used to begin at dawn: it was held at six until 1924, then at seven, and only reached its present hour in 1974.

Which animals are let loose in the Pamplona bullring for runners to dodge once the morning's bulls are penned?

Young cows, the 'vaquillas', are sent in with capped horns; smaller and nimbler than the bulls, they still bowl over plenty of the amateurs crowding the sand.

Roughly how long is the Pamplona bull-run route?

About 850 metres of old-town streets is all it covers, yet nobody runs the lot: the herd is too fast, so each runner picks one short stretch and peels away as the horns arrive.

What becomes of the six bulls a few hours after each Pamplona morning run?

They face the matadors at that evening's bullfight, which is why the run exists at all: it began as the drovers' way of moving the day's bulls from a corral at the edge of town to the arena.

What is the job of the steers that run alongside the fighting bulls?

Guiding the herd to the ring is their job: the steers run the route every morning and know the way, and a second group sets off behind to sweep up any bull that stops or turns back.

What does a Pamplona bull run's second rocket announce?

All bulls out: the first rocket says the corral gate is open and the second that every bull has left it; a third reports the herd inside the bullring and a fourth that it is penned, the signal to reopen the streets.

Roughly how long does a typical Pamplona bull run last, from first rocket to last bull penned?

About 3 minutes, and these days often less: an anti-slip coating on the route's sharpest bend keeps the bulls on their feet and the herd together, so runs have been getting quicker.

What do the 'pastores', the herdsmen who run behind the bulls in Pamplona, carry?

Long sticks are the herdsmen's only tool: they use them to keep the bulls moving forward and on any runner who goads an animal.

From which street's corral are the bulls released at the start of the run?

Santo Domingo runs uphill from the corral, yet the herd is at its fastest here: the bulls burst out fresh and are on top of the runners within seconds.

Which long, straight Pamplona street do the bulls enter after the sharp right-hand bend known as 'la curva'?

Estafeta is the run's longest straight, about 300 metres between house fronts; the bulls come out of the bend more slowly, so this is where runners try to get right in front of the horns.

The short final stretch of the route before the bullring is nicknamed after what former building?

The old telephone office gave the 'Telefónica' stretch its name; it covers the last few metres before the tunnel into the bullring, and it was here that a bull gored a runner to death in 2009.

Why did Pamplona's bull run get a second fence in 1941?

A bull escaped: in 1939 one named Liebrero smashed through the single fence and badly gored a woman, so two years later a second barrier went up behind the first.

Who is allowed to stand in the lane between the two fences during a Pamplona bull run?

Medics, police and press get the lane while spectators stay behind the outer fence; the gaps in the inner one are cut wide enough for a runner to dive through but too narrow for a bull.

By Pamplona's rules, who is banned outright from running with the bulls?

Under-18s are barred; the city's rules also oblige runners to go the same way as the bulls and never call or touch them, and police remove anyone who turns up drunk.

What do the 'dobladores' waiting inside the Pamplona bullring use to steer arriving bulls into the pens?

Capes, trailed along the sand rather than flourished as in a bullfight, draw each bull straight across the ring and into the pens as quickly as possible.

What are the red neckerchiefs of Pamplona's San Fermín festival said to commemorate?

The saint's death by beheading is the usual reading: the clergy wear red on a martyr's feast day, and in Pamplona the neckerchief is explained as the crowd's own version of that custom.

What everyday item do some runners carry rolled up to divert a bull's attention?

A newspaper, rolled into a baton, is the runner's one tool: a flick of it can draw a bull's attention away, and runners raise it as they sing to the saint before the start.

Which sight do Pamplona's runners dread most, since it makes serious gorings far more likely?

A lone bull is the danger: packed together the animals only want to follow each other along the route, but one that is cut off loses its bearings and turns on whatever moves.

What is the Spanish word for the dangerous pile-up of runners that can form at the bullring entrance?

Montón, literally 'heap', is the runners' word for it: the tunnel into the bullring is far narrower than the street, so one fall can stack bodies across it, as in 1977, when a runner suffocated.

Who staffs most first-aid posts on the Pamplona bull run?

The Red Cross supplies most of the volunteers who staff the posts along the fences, which is how a badly gored runner can be on the way to hospital within minutes.

What are the 'peñas', whose brass bands fill the sunny side of Pamplona's bullring?

Social clubs, each with its own smock, banner and brass band: when the bullfight ends they march out of the ring playing, an exit that has become one of the festival's rituals.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, what had last cancelled Pamplona's San Fermín festival outright?

The Spanish Civil War cost the city its festivals of 1937 and 1938; when they came back in 1939 the opening rocket returned with them, and it has started each one since.

What is the name of the rocket fired at noon to open Pamplona's San Fermín festival?

Chupinazo is the rocket fired from the town-hall balcony; the packed square below holds its red neckerchiefs stretched overhead until it goes up, and only then ties them on.

What is the name of the song that closes Pamplona's San Fermín festival at midnight on its last night?

Pobre de mí, 'poor me', mourns the end of the party: the crowd in the town-hall square sings it by candlelight and takes off the red neckerchiefs it has worn all week.

Why was the Riau-Riau council procession dropped from Pamplona's festival in the 1990s?

Protesters kept turning it violent: what began as a joke, the crowd dancing one waltz over and over to slow the councillors' 500-metre walk to church, became a yearly confrontation, and revivals in 1996 and 2012 failed.

Pamplona's parade giants are four royal couples, each standing for one of what?

Continents: the kings and queens of Europe, Asia, Africa and America, made in 1860 with Oceania left out; each figure is danced through the streets by a single bearer inside its frame.

What do the kilikis, the scowling big-headed figures in Pamplona's festival parade, do to children?

Swat them with foam truncheons: the six kilikis, with names such as Caravinagre and Napoleón, chase children along the route as the rowdy escort of the parade's dancing giants.

Which nightly event of Pamplona's San Fermín festival doubles as an international competition?

Fireworks: each night's display is an entry in a contest between pyrotechnics firms, and the way to judge it is the local one, stretched out on the grass of the park around the citadel and looking straight up.

Why did Pamplona move San Fermín's feast from autumn to July?

Better weather: fed up with rain-soaked autumn feasts, the townspeople shifted the saint's day to early July, when a livestock fair with bullfights was already drawing crowds, and the two merged into one festival.

Where did Pamplona stage bullfights before building a bullring?

Its main square, the Plaza del Castillo: the bull run used to finish there, and the route only took its present shape once proper rings were built just beyond the square from the 1840s.

In tradition, who was San Fermín, the saint behind Pamplona's great festival?

Its first bishop, tradition says: the son of a Roman senator in Pamplona, he was ordained in Toulouse and came home to lead its Christians, though no record of his cult in the city predates the 12th century.

How was Saturninus, the Toulouse saint said to have baptised San Fermín, martyred?

Dragged to death by a bull, his legend says, for refusing to make a pagan sacrifice; a Toulouse church called the Taur, 'the bull', is said to stand where his body came loose.

San Fermín shares the patronage of Navarre with which Navarre-born Jesuit missionary?

Francis Xavier, born at the castle of Javier in Navarre, is co-patron of the region with San Fermín; the surprise is that neither is patron of Pamplona itself, an honour that belongs to Saturninus.

Which 1926 Ernest Hemingway novel made the Pamplona festival world-famous?

The Sun Also Rises grew out of his 1925 visit with a group of expatriate friends: he had gone looking for material, and he began the novel within days of that year's festival ending.

Under what title did Jonathan Cape publish Hemingway's Pamplona novel in London in 1927?

Fiesta is the title its London publisher gave the British edition, brought out once the novel had proved a quick success in America, and it stuck: Spanish readers still know the book by that name.

In which city was Hemingway living when he first travelled to Pamplona's festival in 1923?

Paris, where Hemingway was the Toronto Star's young correspondent; he came with his wife Hadley, wrote the bull run up for the paper, and kept returning until 1959.

What is the title of Hemingway's 1932 non-fiction book about bullfighting?

Death in the Afternoon grew out of the Pamplona bullfights he had followed since the 1920s; part history and part glossary, it treats the ring as the place where courage and fear show most plainly.

Which 2010 Tom Cruise film stages a Pamplona-style bull run through the streets of Seville?

Knight and Day sends Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz by motorbike into a bull run that the film places in Seville rather than Pamplona; its bull-run scenes were in fact shot in Cádiz.

Which 1991 Billy Crystal comedy opens with three friends running from the bulls in Pamplona?

City Slickers opens in Pamplona because its three New Yorkers use adventure trips to escape midlife boredom; the bull run comes a year before the cattle drive that fills the rest of the film.

Which 2011 Bollywood film uses the bull run as the final dare on three friends' bucket list?

Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara was planned for Mexico until director Zoya Akhtar settled on the Pamplona bull run as its climax and moved the whole road trip to Spain.

A 1215 church ruling, the first record of Cuéllar's bull run, banned whom from the bull games?

Priests: the bishop of Segovia's synod ruled that no cleric should play dice or attend bull games, on pain of suspension, which suggests the sport already had a firm hold on the town.

In an abrivado, the Camargue's bull run, who escorts the bulls?

Men on horseback, the Camargue's 'gardians', ride in a tight V around the bulls, while youths on foot try to break into the formation and set an animal loose.

Which English town chased a bull through its streets every 13 November until the custom was suppressed in 1839?

Stamford clung to its bull-running after Parliament outlawed the sport in 1835, and gave up only when the townspeople tired of paying for the troops sent each November to stop it.

Which Mexican city with many expatriates cancelled its Pamplona-style bull run in 2007, citing public disorder?

San Miguel de Allende scrapped its 'Sanmiguelada' over the drunken disorder it drew; the city was bidding at the time for UNESCO World Heritage status, which it won the following year.

What animal replaces the bulls in Anchorage's annual 'running' held during the Fur Rendezvous Festival?

Reindeer are released behind herds of runners on a four-block stretch of downtown Anchorage, a winter spoof of Pamplona first staged in 2008.

Which Navarrese cyclist is honoured in the mock bull run held the morning after Pamplona's festival?

Miguel Induráin is impersonated by a rider in a yellow jersey who plays the bull on 15 July, with the last revellers running ahead of him; they used to run before the first city bus, until the bus company diverted it.

Which two F1 drivers took their cars down Pamplona's bull-run route in 2008?

David Coulthard and Sébastien Bourdais drove for Red Bull Racing and its sister team Toro Rosso; the drinks company behind both brought the cars to Pamplona as a publicity run.

What protest did PETA stage in Pamplona each year from 2002, two days before the first bull run?

The Running of the Nudes began in 2002 with about two dozen naked protesters following the bulls' route, and within five years it was drawing hundreds of them.

Roughly how much does a full-grown fighting bull in the Pamplona run weigh?

About 600 kg, and built for speed rather than bulk: the breed is raised lean and muscular, not for beef, and ranches now pick fast, agile animals for Pamplona so that the run is over quickly.

Which fact about cattle undermines the idea that the colour red enrages a bull?

Cattle are red-green colourblind, so it is the sweep of the cloth that draws the charge: a bull goes just as hard for the matador's other, magenta-and-gold cloth, and the red mainly hides the blood.

What colour handkerchief does a bullring president show to pardon an exceptionally brave bull?

Orange is the one handkerchief in the president's set reserved for the pardon; a bull reprieved this way never fights again and goes home to its ranch to sire the next generation.

Which Roman general is traditionally credited with founding Pamplona around 75 BC?

Pompey wintered there during his war against the rebel general Sertorius; the Greek geographer Strabo explained the town's Roman name, Pompaelo, as meaning 'Pompey's city'.

Which club, the only Navarrese side ever in La Liga, plays at El Sadar in Pamplona?

Osasuna has even opened the festival: when the club won promotion back to the top flight in 2000, its captain was given the honour of firing the opening rocket from the town-hall balcony.

What are runners who fall in front of the Pamplona herd told to do?

Stay down and keep still, hands over the head: a bull will usually trample on past a shape lying on the ground, whereas a runner who scrambles up can rise straight into the path of the horns.

In which two languages is the pre-run benediction to Saint Fermin sung?

Spanish and Basque: runners sing to a small statue of the saint set in a wall niche, asking him to guide them through the run, and the Basque verse joined the Spanish one only in 2009.

What do revellers spray over one another in Pamplona's town-hall square when San Fermín begins?

Sparkling wine by the bottle is uncorked and sprayed across the packed square as the opening rocket goes up, so the crowd's spotless white clothes are drenched before the party is a minute old.

The Spanish word for a bull run, 'encierro', comes from a verb meaning what?

To shut in: 'encerrar' means to pen or lock up, and an encierro was simply the job of getting the day's bulls into the bullring pens; the crowd sprinting ahead of the horns came later.