bulls | The Bulls Of Pamplona

Alexander Fiske-Harrison: Writer, 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, then pursued postgraduate work on the foundations of biology and animal consciousness at the University of London.

While researching a book, he trained as a bullfighter in Andalusia alongside 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, and his tale of 1950s Paris and Pamplona, Les Invincibles, was shortlisted for The Hemingway Prize 2016 in France. In Spain he has spoken at the Foundation of Taurine Studies, the University of Seville and for the Spanish Ambassador to the United Kingdom.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison portrait — Alexander Fiske-Harrison

Alexander Fiske-Harrison in the bullring — Training in Andalusia

Fighting bull in Cuéllar — The bull of Cuéllar

Bull-runner Jason Gilbert — Jason Gilbert

Illustration of the encierro — The encierro illustrated

Runners in the streets of Pamplona — Running the streets

Author profile

Writing and Media Work

Fiske-Harrison has written and spoken about the world of the bulls for 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).

More by this author

El Toro Bravo: A Living Myth

“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 repeat these words to one another — murmured in restaurants, whispered in bars, written in letters, typed in emails and shared in runners’ groups online. This taurine chatter goes on all year, yet those icy notes of anxiety, trepidation and dread creep into our voices as the spring sun rises. Deep in the unconscious, the vernal equinox stirs dark things: memories, fears, the ghosts of bulls we have run with and almost died with.

Every day I have run in Pamplona, the greatest and most famous encierro of them all, my fears for myself have been matched 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 how many newcomers seem to believe these animals are somehow not dangerous, even tame — otherwise how would the event be allowed? 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 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, chose the man next to 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 hosting 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 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 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 indistinguishable: the encierro often ended in the town square, which was closed 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 is that of a major city rather than a village, there have been only 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.

Fatalities and Risk in the Encierro

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. There is, however, one great difference between skydiving and bull-running: before their first parachute jump, people are invariably taught.