Spain's 'risky' but fun-filled San Fermin festival

The northern Spanish city of Pamplona has become famous worldwide for its high-risk festival, the San Fermin festival. In this festival revelers run through narrow streets in the early morning with charging bulls on their way to the ring.

The 875-metre sprint features specially-bred animals chasing red-scarved runners through the city’s cobbled streets. The Bull Run is the major highlight of the nine-day festival.

Bull runs are a traditional part of summer festivals across Spain. This year’s run which was nationally televised, lasted two and a half minutes. The fun however comes with dangerous costs, as revelers risk being gored down by the charging bulls.

“It was messy, obviously, the bulls, one of the first ones came out and I was running in the outside in town hall square and he was hugging that outside pretty tight, and then I wanted to go with him and I think I hesitated a little bit, and he kind of looked at me and grabbed me and tossed me up in the air, ripped my pants, but luckily just scraped the inside of my leg with his horn, so I was lucky in that respect,” says Jacob Hawe, a Canadian reveler.

The fiesta, also known for its 24-hour street partying, became world famous with Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel “The Sun Also Rises.” It attracts thousands of foreign tourists.

However the event has recently been blighted by a series of sexual assaults, despite efforts by local authorities to ensure the safety of women attending the event.

Four rapes were reported to police in the first five days of this year’s event.