Alexander Fiske-Harrison: Author, Bull-Runner and Expert on the Spanish Bull
Alexander Fiske-Harrison is a British writer, journalist, conservationist, bull-runner and former amateur bull-fighter. Brought up in England, he moved to Spain in his thirties. At the University of Oxford he studied large mammal zoology and animal behaviour, and later, as a postgraduate at the University of London, the foundations of biology and animal consciousness.
While researching a book he trained as a bullfighter in Andalusia, working alongside 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 his tale of 1950s Paris and Pamplona, 'Les Invincibles', was shortlisted for The Hemingway Prize 2016 in France. In Spain he has given talks at the Foundation of Taurine Studies, at the University of Seville and for the Ambassador of Spain to the United Kingdom.
His articles and commentary on the world of the bulls have been published in national and international outlets, including The Times, The New York Times, Newsweek, GQ magazine, the BBC, CNN and the Discovery Channel. He first ran with the bulls in Pamplona in 2009 and, apart from 2010 – when he was bullfighting in Andalusia – has run every year since in the encierros of San Fermín, as well as in other Spanish towns such as San Sebastián de los Reyes (Madrid), Cuéllar (Castile and León), Tafalla and Falces (Navarre).
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 chatter carries on all year, yet those icy notes of anxiety, trepidation and dread steal into our voices as the spring sun rises. Deep in the unconscious mind the Vernal Equinox stirs dark things: memories, fears, the ghosts of bulls we have run with and almost died with.
On every day I have run in Pamplona, the greatest and most famous encierro of them all, my fears for myself have been equalled by my fears for others. Hence the need for this book. At each of those forty-odd San Fermín encierros (as of 2016) I have been struck by the belief so many newcomers seem to hold that these animals are somehow not dangerous, tame even – otherwise how would the event be allowed to happen? Who would let unwitting tourists loose in a street with half-ton horned animals that have never seen a man on the ground before? The answer, to paraphrase The Go-Between, is that Spain is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
In my fourth ever encierro, in Pamplona in 2011, I found myself pinned against the fence by a panicked crush of human bodies, unable to move as a four-year-old, 585kg (1,290lbs/92 stone) Spanish fighting bull charged at me. That day the bull, Empleado, from the notoriously dangerous ranch of Cebado Gago, picked the man beside me instead. He ended up in hospital while I ended up in Bar Txoko – and it was the bull who decided who ended up where. That day made me as a bull-runner, and I have not run the same since.
Which is why in 2015 in Cuéllar, the Old Castilian town that hosts the most ancient encierro in the world, I kept a healthy distance from a bull whose left horn was coated with the blood of a man he had just killed. Watch the video of that killing and it looks like a glancing blow: the bull runs past him and nods its head as though bowing in respect, yet in a movement too fast for the human eye it drove its horn up under the man's ribs and burst his heart within his chest. In total, fifteen people died in bull-running events across Spain that year.
In an encierro the streets themselves become a plaza de toros, a bull ring. In days gone by the bull-run and the bullfight were almost impossible to tell apart: the encierro often finished in the town square, which was sealed off with wagons or makeshift barricades, and a capea, or informal bullfight, would begin. In Pamplona, where emergency services are primed and the medical expertise on offer is that of a major city rather than a village, there have only been fifteen deaths since records began in the 1920s. This is why, unless you know what you are doing – and especially what to do when things go wrong – you needlessly and massively increase your risk of leaving on a stretcher if you are lucky, and in a body-bag if you are not.
The Encierro: Its History and Its Dangers
The first recorded death was Esteban Domeño Laborra, from Sangüesa (which also holds an encierro), in 1924 – an account appears in The Sun Also Rises, as 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.
It is worth noting that 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 is around 1 in 150,000 runs. That is roughly the same fatality rate as jumping out of an aeroplane: according to the United States Parachute Association, out of 3.5 million jumps in 2015 there were 21 fatal accidents. Yet there is one great difference between skydiving and bull-running: before their first parachute jump, people are invariably taught.
From his first run in 2009 to his training in Andalusia, Alexander Fiske-Harrison writes about the encierro from the inside: the bulls, the runners and the towns that host them. His work pairs firsthand experience with the history and risks of bull-running, and with the living myth of El Toro Bravo.