A Spanish judge has taken away visiting rights from a man who took his 10-year-old son to a running of the bulls during the annual Pamplona festival last week, Spanish media reported on Tuesday.
The boy’s mother filed a police complaint after seeing a photograph published in a newspaper of her smiling ex-husband leading their son by the arm just a few steps ahead of the bulls, private radio Cadena Ser reported.
A judge in the town of Fuenlabrada, south of Madrid, then ruled that police locate the man and return the boy to his mother in order to prevent him from continuing to put the child’s life in danger, it said.
Pamplona city officials, meanwhile, slapped the man with a fine of €150. Participants in the bull run must be at least 18 years old.
The man has since told Spanish media that he would run with his son in front of the bulls, which weigh between 500kg and 700kg, again.
Runners are sometimes caught and either gored or trampled by the bulls during the nine-day festival and 14 people have been killed since 1911 in the event, made world famous by Ernest Hemingway in his novel The Sun Also Rises.
The most recent death was that of an American in 1995. More than 25 people were injured during this year’s festival, which wrapped up on Saturday. — AFP