PAMPLONA, Spain (Reuters) - Thirteen people were taken to hospital, one of them seriously injured, on the first day of the annual bull running festival in the northern Spanish town of Pamplona on Monday, organizers said. A 37-year-old man suffered a collapsed lung, ruptured spleen and broken ribs, while two people were concussed and 10 others were treated mainly for cuts and bruises.
The annual San Fermin festival draws tourists from around the world, many donning traditional all-white garb with a red sash around the waist and red kerchief around the neck before running through narrow, twisting cobbled streets, pursued by bulls.
The chase lasts about four minutes. It was not clear how the injuries were caused, but no one was gored out of the hundreds who took part in the early morning run. Participants often fall and are trampled by fellow-runners in the stampede.
Those admitted to hospital after Monday's run included visitors from Britain, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and the United States, as well as other parts of Spain. One tourist meanwhile died after falling from the top of the city's high medieval walls. Police identified him as Aidan Holly, 23, from Ireland.
The festival's origins go back to the 13th century. The bull-running was made famous by Ernest Hemingway's novel "The Sun also Rises," a semi-autobiographical account of an alcohol-fuelled visit to the festival by a group of squabbling British and American friends in the 1920s. The bulls are usually killed after the runs by bullfighters. Although still massively popular in Spain, bullfighting is attracting protests and critical articles in newspapers by some of the country's leading novelists.
Dozens of semi-naked animal rights activists held a protest in Pamplona on Saturday by lying on the ground along the course of the bull running, with imitation barbs stuck to their shoulders, mimicking those which are plunged into the bulls at the start of a fight.
