FOR a day each week in July, Spaniards and tourists celebrate the annual Pamplona street festival by running of the bulls, hounding them through the streets before slowly torturing them to death in the city's bullring.

Eight people have been gored in the week as they maimed and tortured the animals. Good, it serves them right, their injuries are cared for and they survive.

No such compassion for the bulls facing deliberate pain and cruelty till death is a release from a civilised (?) society, part of the European Community.

MRS SHEILA BRENNAN, Bombay Street, Blackburn.