PAMPLONA, Spain (Reuters) - Thirteen people were taken to hospital, one of them seriously injured, on the first day of the annual bull running festival in the northern Spanish town of Pamplona on Monday, organisers said.
A 37-year-old man suffered a collapsed lung, rupturedspleen and broken ribs, while two people were concussed and 10others were treated mainly for cuts and bruises.
The annual San Fermin festival draws tourists from aroundthe world, many donning traditional all-white garb with a redsash around the waist and red kerchief around the neck beforerunning through narrow, twisting cobbled streets, pursued bybulls. The chase lasts about four minutes.
It was not clear how the injuries were caused, but no onewas gored out of the hundreds who took part in the earlymorning run. Participants often fall and are trampled byfellow-runners in the stampede.
Those admitted to hospital after Monday's run includedvisitors from Britain, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa andthe United States, as well as other parts of Spain.
One tourist meanwhile died after falling from the top ofthe city's high medieval walls. Police identified him as AidanHolly, 23, from Ireland.
The festival's origins go back to the 13th century. Thebull-running was made famous by Ernest Hemingway's novel "TheSun also Rises", a semi-autobiographical account of analcohol-fuelled visit to the festival by a group of squabblingBritish and American friends in the 1920s.
The bulls are usually killed after the runs bybullfighters. Although still massively popular in Spain,bullfighting is attracting protests and critical articles innewspapers by some of the country's leading novelists.
Dozens of semi-naked animal rights activists held a protestin Pamplona on Saturday by lying on the ground along the courseof the bull running, with imitation barbs stuck to theirshoulders, mimicking those which are plunged into the bulls atthe start of a fight.
(Reporting by Cristina Fuentes; Writing by Martin Roberts;Editing by Mark Trevelyan)