Running of Bulls Starts in Spain

MADRID (AP) -- Thousands of revelers are dousing each other with wine to celebrate the start of the famed San Fermin running of the bulls festival in the northern Spanish city of Pamplona.

The festival started Monday with the traditional launching of a fireworks rocket — known as the "Chupinazo"— from the town hall balcony as the heaving crowd packing the square down below began jumping and screaming "Viva San Fermin."

The Chupinazo takes place a day before the first of eight 8 a.m. bull runs in which daredevils race ahead of hulking fighting bulls through winding streets to the city's bullring.

The nine-day street-partying fiesta was immortalized in Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel "The Sun Also Rises."

(KA)