Alexander Fiske-Harrison: Author, Bull-Runner and Bullfighting Scholar
Alexander Fiske-Harrison is a British writer, journalist, conservationist, bull-runner and former amateur bullfighter. Raised in England, he relocated to Spain in his thirties. He studied large mammal zoology and animal behaviour at the University of Oxford, and later explored the foundations of biology and animal consciousness as a postgraduate at the University of London. While researching his book, he trained as a bullfighter in Andalusia under matadors such as Juan José Padilla, Cayetano Rivera Ordóñez and Eduardo Dávila Miura.
His book Into The Arena: The World Of The Spanish Bullfight was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book Of The Year Award 2011. His tale of 1950s Paris and Pamplona, ‘Les Invincibles’, was shortlisted for The Hemingway Prize 2016 in France. In Spain, he has been invited to speak at the Foundation of Taurine Studies, the University of Seville and for the Ambassador of Spain to the United Kingdom.
Writing and Media Contributions
Fiske-Harrison has written and spoken about the world of the bulls for national and international media, 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—he 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).
The Encierro: A Living Tradition
“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.” This is what bull-runners say to one another: they mutter it in restaurants and whisper it in bars, some still write it in letters and others type it in emails and post about it on runners’ groups on social media. This taurine chatter happens all year long, but those icy notes of anxiety… of trepidation… of dread, begin to enter our voices as the Spring sun rises. Deep down in our unconscious minds the Vernal Equinox makes dark things stir, memories, fears… the ghosts of bulls we’ve run with, and almost died with.
Every day that I have run in Pamplona, the greatest and most famous encierro of them all, alongside my fears for myself have been 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 stunned by the belief so many newcomers seem to have that these animals are somehow not dangerous, tame even, because otherwise how would this event be allowed to happen? I mean 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 is, to paraphrase The Go-Between, Spain is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
In my 4th ever encierro in Pamplona in 2011, I found myself wedged against the fence by a panicked press of human bodies unable to move as a four-year-old, 585kg (1,290lbs/92 stone) Spanish fighting bull bore down on me. That day the bull, Empleado, from the notoriously dangerous ranch of Cebado Gago, decided to take the man next to me instead. He ended up in hospital while I ended up in Bar Txoko, and it was the bull who made the decision on 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 town in Old Castile which 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. If you watch the video of that killing it looks like a glancing blow: the bull runs passed him, and nods its head as though it were bowing in respect, and yet in a movement too fast for the human eye to perceive, it punched its horn up under the man’s ribs and exploded his heart within his chest. In total, fifteen people died in bull-running events across Spain in that year.
In an encierro the streets themselves become a plaza de toros, a ‘bull ring’. In fact, in days gone by the bull-run and the bullfight were almost indistinguishable. The encierro often ended in the town square, which was then closed off with wagons or other makeshift barricades, and a capea, or informal bullfight would begin. In Pamplona, where the emergency services are primed and the medical expertise on offer that of a major city rather than a village or small town, 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 first recorded death was Esteban Domeño Laborra, from Sangüesa (where they also have an encierro), in 1924 – there is an account in The Sun Also Rises as Hemingway was there that year – while the most recent was Daniel Jimeno Romero, from Alcalá de Henares (where they also have an encierro), in 2009 – there is an account in Into The Arena as I was there that year. It’s worth pointing out these days, between fifteen hundred and three thousand people run in each of the eight daily encierros, and with only two fatalities this century, this means that the Pamplona fatality rate is around 1 in 150,000 runs. This 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. However, there is one great difference between skydiving and bull-running: before their first parachute jump, people are invariably taught.
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