soaked in wine as party marks start of Pamplona bull runs

a) Thousands of revellers each other with wine on Monday to celebrate the start of the famed San Fermin running of the bulls festival.

b) The festival started with the traditional of a fireworks rocket — known as the Chupinazo — from the town hall balcony.

c) The crowd packed the Pamplona square down below, jumping and screaming “Viva San Fermin!”

d) Most in the crowd red neckerchiefs, which along with white shirts and trousers, form the traditional festival clothing.

QUOTE: "Pamplona’s streets are with bulls’ blood."

e) The Chupinazo takes place a day before the first of eight 8am bull runs in this northern Spanish city.

f) Thousands of people at the festival test their speed and by racing ahead of six fighting bulls along a 930-yard (850-metre) course from a holding pen to the city’s bull ring.

g) The bulls are then killed by professional in bullfights each afternoon.

h) The nine-day, street-partying fiesta was in Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises and attracts thousands of foreign tourists.

i) Earlier, more than 100 semi-naked covered in red paint launched a protest outside the entrance to the Pamplona bull ring.