TARGET 090506 El Toro en Pamplona!

If you're a reasonable person, I'm sure you must have asked yourself this question by now: " Why the hell run with bulls?" "What for?" "Why would you want to run with a 2 ton raging beast, that has gained momentum, is headed straight for you, and can turn you into swisscheese in less than 5 seconds?" Is it a deathwish?. Is it depraved indifference? Did someone get tired of tipping cows one day and said "hey, I think I'll run with a bull."?! Well, believe it or not, there is a good reason for this tradition which has turned into a national and international pastime. Basically, the bull corral is quite a ways from the Plaza de Toros (the bullring) where the bulls are fought.

So every day, the bulls had to be transported somehow from the corral over to the bullring. The stablehands used to herd the bulls much in the same way that you herd sheep, running behind the bulls with rolled up newspapers, guiding them along the path to the Plaza de Toros. Young men from the town would gather along to watch the action, and soon people started joining in to help. And before you knew it, everyone was getting into the act. Well, you know how macho a bunch of guys can be, so it wasn't long before some genuis thought up the idea of running in front of the bulls. Yeah! That ought to be fun! Let's try that!

Of course, there are always those less macho, macho men who partake in the festivities the safer way...

But there's a pretty high cost even for them...

The path to the bullring is a cordoned off section of the town's streets, leading from the stockyards to the bullfighting stadium. So, it is called in Spanish, "Encierro", from the verb encerrar: to shut in, to lock up. (also where we get our word, "encarcerate"). The most famous of the encierros is that of the nine-day festival of San Fermín in Pamplona, although they are held in towns and villages across Spain and in some cities in southern France, during the summer. Unlike the actual bullfights in the bullrings, which are performed by professionals, anyone brave or dumb enough may participate in an encierro. It just so happens that in Pamplona, the Feria del Toro (the Bullfighting Fair) is during the same week that the Fiesta of San Fermin is held. In the past, these two events were maybe a few weeks apart, but then someone had the big idea of combining the two events into a 9 day long party, which is now the present day Fiesta of San Fermin. For those advanced viewers doing a timeline of these events, the following picture provides feedback on the end of the encierro. As for feedback on an actual bullfight, you'll have to look on the web for that. I didn't want to describe in detail what goes on there.

Video: To see a video of the encierro, click here . FEEDBACK MAP

If you got information which is not covered by this feedback, you can gain more feedback at the following web sites: Wikipedia Spanish festival Information Page 2010 San Fermin Festival Information Page