The widely known Spanish festival of San Fermin (西班牙奔牛节) started on Monday. The nine days of festival, where‘the running of the bulls' is one of the main attractions, is made up of a rocket fired into the air from the town hall in front of a crowded main square. Thousands of people from around the world would gather at the square and more would spend those days in the city enjoying the festival which involves many activities of different kinds accompanied by drinking and eating．
The program includes 459 main activities.Around 71 percent of them involve music, there are around 82 activities for families and there will also be fireworks, apart from the main attraction, ‘the running of the bulls'. The ‘running of the bulls' takes place every morning and thousands of people run alongside and in front of the bulls. Every year there are injured people and some have been killed all over the years, while the bulls are killed in the afternoon bullfight. 3,350 members of the police will watch over the festival and more than 100 members of the Red Cross will attend the ‘running of the bulls' to deal with injured people．
The festival was vividly depicted by Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises which made the festival internationally known. The festival dates back to the 13th century and the origin is the celebration of the patron saint(守护神) of Pamplona. This celebration was originally held on October 10 but in 1591 people from Pamplona changed the date to July to enjoy better weather and when the livestock market(牲畜市场) took place, although bullfights were first documented in the 14th century．
