Festival goers sprayed each other with bottles of champagne

"Men and women of Pamplona. Long live San Fermin. Happy fiestas," shouted the chairman of a popular local handball club, who opened the fiesta by lighting the first firework.

San Fermin is a 400-year-old bullfight extravaganza that was immortalised in Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises.

After a night of drinking and dancing, the fiesta begins in earnest Saturday morning, with the first running of the bulls.

But only a few hundred of the bravest will gather in the old quarter each morning pursued by six stampeding bulls. The fighting bulls will be killed by matadors each afternoon.

Spanish television broadcasts the bull run live until the fiesta ends on 14 July.

The bulls usually injure several people each day. Since the start of the last century, 13 runners have been gored fatally or trampled to death.

The running of the bulls dates back to 1591 when its purpose was to move the bulls into the arena.