Every year in Pamplona, from the 6th to the 14th of July, the San Firmin, a feast in honor of the holy Firmin, are celebrated. Every morning at 8 o Clock 6 bulls are rushed through the narrow streets of the old town together with several steer oxen to an arena. In the arena, at the evening, up to eight Toreros are attached to a bull, spiked him again and injure him with daggers and Banderillas. This lasts until the bull is weakened by the loss of blood. Then the matador pierces the exhausted animal with a sword and an executioner cuts through the spinal cord.
The rush of animals takes only a few minutes. Hundreds of men, the so-called “mozos” race in front of the bulls, about 825 meters through the narrow streets of the northern Spanish city – it is considered particularly courageous to let the bulls get as close as possible to themselves!!
Thousands of tourists from all over the world feed the coffers enormously.
But only the the bull spectacle brings the tourist business realy to blooming: San Fermin shirts with bulls and bullfighters, Made in China, magnets with bull running motifs, all of the cheap kind: these are generally the best-selling products in the shops of the Estafeta street.
The origin of this idiotic custom lies in a cattle market on the occasion of the Patronesses, to which the butcher boys drove the livestock to be sold every morning.
Sometimes the Fiesta activities have orgiastic traits.
A fashion is to throw yourself from the four-meter-high fountain into the crowd, if this does not make a place before. Serious injuries are on the agenda, the ambulances are working at full speed. Machos of this earth use the moment of the Fiesta opening, in which the masses have the closest physical contact, to sexist fisticuffs, which have led in the meantime to many advertisements that the event is meticulously camera-monitored in order to make the idiots arrest.
“The mob has many heads but no brains”
The bulls are irritated before the race with electric shocks and sharp sticks, then tortured and slaughtered in the arena, criticized Birgit Wagner of the organization PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).
“Tormenting and slaughtering animals for our entertainment is a Stone Age spectacle,” said the 33-year-old Peta activist. Criticism came also from the German animal protection federation.
The spectacle was an ordeal masquerading as a cultural tradition (!!!), said Federal Managing Director Thomas Schröder.
https://www.focus.de/panorama/welt/spanien-pamplona-eroeffnet-hatz-auf-stiere_aid_316178.html
