Pamplona paints streets to make it safer for bulls
Applying no-slip paint was supposed to help the bulls and the runners in annual festival, but the reviews aren't favourable

Isambard Wilkinson
Daily Telegraph

July 8, 2005

CREDIT: Jesus Caso, Associated Press
A fighting bull falls during run through the streets of Pamplona, Spain on Thursday. The San Fermin bull-running festival was popularized by Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises.

MADRID -- Coating the streets of Pamplona with non-slip paint for the city's bull run, in an effort to reduce the number of people gored or trampled, has proved both controversial and apparently ineffective.

Trying to make the half-mile run of the corrida to the city's bullring safer was never likely to go down well with veterans of the chaotic fiesta. But the results of the first full day of the festival Thursday confirmed doubters' fears as one of the six half-tonne beasts slipped and fell at the first corner where local authorities had covered the cobbles with an anti-slip spray.

It then fell again and badly injured itself and arrived at the end of the course with one of its horns dangling and leaving it unfit to face a matador in the traditional evening fight. It was thus dispatched immediately for the slaughter house.

Alexandra Popovska, a 19-year-old Canadian woman, was trampled in the fray. Women rarely run and for years were forbidden from doing so.

"The whole herd went over her and trod on her," a hospital spokesman said, but added that her injuries were not serious.

A 33-year-old local man was also injured.

The acid-based non-slip product was designed to stop bulls and runners from falling over. Sixteen people were gored by bulls and 40 others needed hospital treatment last year during the runs held to mark Pamplona's patron saint, San Fermin. Fifteen people, including an American student, have died over the past century.

"The anti-slip paint is there, above all, for the bulls, so they do not fall as they go around the corners," a city spokesman said.

Yolanda Barcina, the mayor of Pamplona, had hoped that the surface would prevent dangerous pile-ups but the weight and speed of the bulls defied any scientific efforts.

However, Julen Madina, a veteran of the run, who was gored last year, was against the safety measure. "I don't like any manipulation of the run. It just distracts attention away from the real problem of the run, which is that there are too many people and too many who do not respect the bull," he said.

Miguel Angel Castander, another veteran, said: "It could have negative consequences in the sense that if a runner is on the floor and a bull gets up on to its feet quicker because it has a better grip then it could be pretty dangerous."

© The Vancouver Sun 2005