Alexander Fiske-Harrison: Bull-Runner & Author

Meet Alexander Fiske-Harrison: Author, Bull-Runner and Scholar of Bullfighting

Alexander Fiske-Harrison is a British writer, journalist, conservationist, bull-runner and one-time amateur bullfighter. Born and raised in England, he moved to Spain in his thirties. At the University of Oxford he studied the zoology and behaviour of large mammals, before going on to postgraduate research at the University of London into the foundations of biology and animal consciousness.

While gathering material for a book, he trained as a bullfighter in Andalusia with matadors including Juan José Padilla, Cayetano Rivera Ordóñez and Eduardo Dávila Miura. His book Into The Arena: The World Of The Spanish Bullfight made the shortlist for the William Hill Sports Book Of The Year Award 2011, and Les Invincibles, his story of 1950s Paris and Pamplona, was shortlisted for The Hemingway Prize 2016 in France. In Spain he has given talks at the Foundation of Taurine Studies, the University of Seville and for the Spanish Ambassador to the United Kingdom.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison pictured in Spain — The author in Spain

Reporting and Broadcasting on the Bullfighting World

His coverage of the bullfighting world has been published and broadcast by national and international outlets such as The Times, The New York Times, Newsweek, GQ magazine, the BBC, CNN and the Discovery Channel. He ran with the bulls in Pamplona for the first time in 2009 and, with the exception of 2010 — when he was bullfighting in Andalusia — has taken part every year since in the San Fermín encierros, along with runs in other Spanish towns including San Sebastián de los Reyes (Madrid), Cuéllar (Castile and León), Tafalla and Falces (Navarre).

Bull-running scene in Spain — Running the encierro

A fighting bull in Cuéllar — The bull of Cuéllar

El Toro Bravo: A Myth That Lives

“It’s when the dreams start, the nightmares, the ones with black shadows, the ones with horns. That’s when you know it’s coming; that’s when you know it’s really begun.” Bull-runners pass these words among themselves — murmured in restaurants, whispered in bars, set down in letters, typed into emails and shared in runners’ groups on social media. This taurine talk continues all year round, yet a cold note of anxiety, trepidation and dread steals into our voices as the spring sun climbs. Somewhere deep in the unconscious, the Vernal Equinox stirs dark things: memories, fears, the ghosts of bulls we have run beside and nearly died beside.

El Toro Bravo, a living myth — photo by Jim Hollander — El Toro Bravo: A living myth (Photo: Jim Hollander – EPA)

Why This Book Matters

On every day I have run in Pamplona — the greatest and most celebrated encierro of them all — my fear for my own safety has been equalled by my fear for everyone else. That is why this book was needed. Across those forty-odd San Fermín encierros (as of 2016) I have been struck by how many newcomers appear to think the animals are somehow harmless, even tame — otherwise, how would the event ever be permitted? Who would turn unknowing tourists loose in a street with half-ton horned animals that have never seen a man on the ground before? The answer, to borrow from The Go-Between, is that Spain is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

Bull-runner Jason Gilbert — Jason Gilbert

Illustration of the encierro — The encierro in motion

A Personal Lesson in the Encierro

During my fourth encierro, in Pamplona in 2011, I was pinned against the fence by a panicked crush of bodies, unable to move as a four-year-old Spanish fighting bull weighing 585kg (1,290lbs/92 stone) charged straight at me. That day the bull, Empleado, from the notoriously dangerous Cebado Gago ranch, picked the man next to me instead. He went to hospital while I went to Bar Txoko — and it was the bull that decided who went where. That day made me as a bull-runner, and I have not run the same way since.

That is why, in 2015 in Cuéllar — the Old Castile town that hosts the world’s most ancient encierro — I kept a safe distance from a bull whose left horn was smeared with the blood of a man he had just killed. On video the killing looks like a glancing blow: the bull runs past, nodding its head as if bowing in respect, yet in a movement too quick for the human eye it drove its horn up beneath the man’s ribs and burst his heart inside his chest. All told, fifteen people died in bull-running events across Spain that year.

A bull-runner close to the bulls — Close quarters in the run

The Streets Become a Bull Ring

During an encierro the streets themselves turn into a plaza de toros. In earlier times the bull-run and the bullfight were nearly impossible to tell apart: the encierro would often finish in the town square, which was sealed off with wagons or improvised barricades before a capea, or informal bullfight, got under way. In Pamplona, where emergency services are on standby and medical expertise is on a par with a major city rather than a village, there have been just fifteen deaths since records began in the 1920s. That is why, unless you know what you are doing — and above all what to do when things go wrong — you needlessly and hugely raise your chances of leaving on a stretcher if you are lucky, and in a body bag if you are not.

The curve of the encierro — photo by Jim Hollander — The streets do not belong to us (Photo: Jim Hollander – EPA)

Deaths and Risk in Pamplona

The earliest recorded death was Esteban Domeño Laborra, from Sangüesa (which also holds an encierro), in 1924 — an account of it appears in The Sun Also Rises, since Hemingway was there that year. The most recent was Daniel Jimeno Romero, from Alcalá de Henares (which also holds an encierro), in 2009 — an account appears in Into The Arena, as I was there that year. Between fifteen hundred and three thousand people run in each of the eight daily encierros, and with only two fatalities this century the Pamplona fatality rate works out at roughly 1 in 150,000 runs. That is about the same as jumping out of an aeroplane: according to the United States Parachute Association, of 3.5 million jumps in 2015 there were 21 fatal accidents. Yet there is one big difference between skydiving and bull-running: before their first parachute jump, people are always taught.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

Cropped image of a bull — The bull at the heart of the story

Alexander Fiske-Harrison’s writing on the bulls moves between memoir, reportage and history, drawing on years spent in the encierros of Pamplona, Cuéllar and beyond. Whether you are a first-time visitor to San Fermín or a seasoned runner, these pages gather his accounts of the run, the people who take part and the animals at its heart.