A man voluntarily ran in front of six bulls in a narrow cobblestone street in Spain on Saturday and got stabbed in the face by a horn. Twelve other people also needed medical treatment after the same run. The festival has seven more days to go, and registration is presumably still open.
What Actually Happened, For Those Who Need It Spelled Out
CBS News reports that Saturday's run was the fifth of eight at Pamplona's San Fermin festival, where a black bull broke from the pack early and plowed directly into a group of runners, hitting one person in the side of the face with a horn. Whether that was the precise moment of the goring is unclear, but what is extremely clear is that a human being's face made contact with a bull horn at speed.
According to the University of Navarra Hospital, one runner was pierced in the face and twelve others required medical treatment for various injuries sustained during the two-and-a-half-minute run. The run covers 957 yards from pen to bull ring. That's less than half a mile between you and a bull that weighs somewhere north of a thousand pounds and has no particular feelings about your continued existence.
Many runners, CBS News notes, appeared completely unaware that bulls were directly behind them. Not sprinting away in terror. Just... unaware. Strolling, essentially, in front of animals that could demolish a small car.
The Part Where We Acknowledge This Is a Real Cultural Tradition
Look, San Fermin is a genuine centuries-old festival rooted in the culture of northern Spain's Navarra region, and we are not here to lecture the Spanish about their traditions. The bullfights, the pageantry, the whole spectacle has its defenders and its critics and that debate has been running longer than most governments.
But the international tourism angle is something else entirely. CBS News points out that gorings and broken bones are common at these runs, and that the injury rate is driven significantly by novice runners and foreign tourists who show up with neither training nor experience and somehow expect a different outcome than the one that keeps happening every single July.
The last death at San Fermin was in 2009. That's actually a reasonably long streak, and credit where it's due to the organizers and medical staff who have managed to keep the mortality count low despite the inherent chaos. The University of Navarra Hospital appears to be running a very tight operation. They have had practice.
Hemingway's Fault, Technically
This year's festival carries an extra layer of irony. CBS News reports that 2026 marks exactly 100 years since Ernest Hemingway published "The Sun Also Rises," the novel widely credited with launching San Fermin to international fame and turning the bull run into a bucket-list event for thrill-seeking foreigners.
So if you're keeping score at home: a man who spent his life courting danger and machismo wrote a book about a festival built around running from bulls, and one hundred years later people are still flying to Spain to get gored in the face because of it. Hemingway died by his own hand in 1961, but his ability to cause damage to strangers is apparently generational.
The bulls, for what it's worth, will be killed by bullfighters later the same day they run. So everyone in this story is having a pretty rough Saturday.
The Logistics of Voluntarily Doing This
Just to be precise about the mechanics here: participants in the bull run are not drafted. There is no lottery. No one is compelled by law or circumstance to stand in a narrow medieval street while six large angry animals charge at them from behind.
The run lasts approximately two and a half minutes, per CBS News. In that time, six bulls and accompanying steers cover the 957-yard course, bodies get knocked to the cobblestones, pileups form when runners stumble, and the whole thing unfolds with exactly as much chaos as you would expect from the scenario described. The only genuine surprise here is that anyone is surprised.
Saturday was day five of eight. Three more mornings of this remain. The hospitality industry in Pamplona is doing great.
The Dingo Take
Here is the thing about the Running of the Bulls that tends to get lost in the annual cycle of footage and hot takes: the danger is not a bug. It's the entire product. People travel from every corner of the world specifically because there is a real chance of getting hurt, and they have decided that chance is acceptable given the story they'll get to tell at parties. That's a completely human impulse. It is also completely insane, and those two things coexist without contradiction.
What makes this specific iteration of the story slightly maddening is the detail CBS News buried near the bottom: many runners appeared completely unaware that bulls were right behind them. Not frozen with fear. Not making a calculated decision to hold their line. Just blissfully oblivious to the thousand-pound animal inches from their spine. If you're going to do something this stupid, at least be present for it.
The man who got gored in the face will probably be fine, and in a few weeks he'll have a story that will clear out any room at any dinner party for the next forty years. The twelve people who needed other medical treatment will recover. The festival will run three more mornings. And next July, a fresh wave of tourists will land in Pamplona, read a Hemingway quote on their phone, pull on a white shirt and a red bandana, and be genuinely shocked when a bull treats their face like a suggestion.
