Pamplona’s San Fermin festival has an encierro, or running of the bulls, every morning. During the encierro, an average of three thousand people will run in front of six or seven bulls, with about five steers to either guide or follow behind them. The bulls are prize animals from ranches all over Spain, bred specifically for this event and for bullfights. The final result for every bull brought into Pamplona for San Fermin will be a bullfight the afternoon following the encierro they run in, and inevitably they will die.

As a prelude to the beginning of San Fermin, every year animal rights protesters gather in Pamplona on July 5, the day before the chupinazo. What was originally the ‘running of the nudes‘, has now become a more serious and startling protest. The organizations involved in this years protest were Anima Naturalis,  Partido Antitaurino Contra el Maltrato Animal (PACMA), and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

According to Francisco Vasquez, director of the Anima Naturalis Barcelona headquarters in Spain (other locations include various South American countries), the participants in this year’s protest included people from twenty-three different countries. Some of the countries represented included: France, Spain, Ireland, Poland, Ukraine, England, Belgium, Russia, Italy, Denmark, Switzerland, Norway, Germany, Portugal, Croatia, Australia, Uruguay, and Chile. Participants are calling for an end to bullfights and to “the torture of animals”.

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