Don’t have a cow.
Spain on Tuesday called off the world-famous Running of the Bulls due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The 400-year-old San Fermín festival in Pamplona, where half-ton beasts tear through narrow streets amid hundreds of runners seeking a thrill, won’t take place in July as planned.
“As expected as it was, it still leaves us deeply sad,” said Ana Elizalde, the acting mayor of Pamplona, according to The Guardian.
Spain is battling one of the deadliest outbreaks of the virus in the world, with at least 21,282 fatalities as of Tuesday. It has the largest number of confirmed cases after the US, at 204,178.
“It seems our beloved fiesta is at odds with the coronavirus,” said Elizalde.
“We’re supposed to wear masks, keep a social distance — measures that are incompatible with what San Fermín is.”
The historic festival, made famous by Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel “The Sun Also Rises,” was also scrapped during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.
Other major events to be called off due to the outbreak include Oktoberfest, the centuries-old beer festival in Munich, Germany, and the Scripps National Spelling Bee in the US.
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