Three minor injuries on day two of the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona

Despite a formidable reputation built on three decades of inflicting damage on runners, the fighting bulls of the Cebada Gago ranch caused very few injuries on day two of the world-famous Sanfermines bull runs in Pamplona, Spain.

Three people were treated for minor injuries after participating in the early morning run, which is part of a larger festival spanning nine days from July 6 to 14.

More than a million people descend each year on this northern city of 200,000 residents for an event that Ernest Hemingway popularized through his novel Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises. More recently, the Sanfermines have made world headlines over a 2016 gang rape and the way it was handled by the courts in a case known as “La Manada.”

Fast and clean

On Monday at 8am, six bulls were released from the Santo Domingo corral and led by tame oxen down a 848.6-meter route through narrow, cobblestoned streets ending in the bullring, where they will face a torero in the afternoon.

Although their reputation precedes them – bulls from the Cebada Gago ranch, based in Cádiz, have hurt 56 runners in the 30 years that they’ve been participating in the Sanfermines – this year only three people were treated for minor injuries and were expected to be discharged throughout the day: a 19-year-old woman and two men ages 45 and 61.

Led by an ox, the herd covered the distance quickly in two minutes and 23 seconds, and did not slip and crash into the fence on the curve leading into Estafeta street, a traditional pitfall in previous years.

English version by Susana Urra.