A REDDITCH woman recently joined activists outside Pamplona's main square to protest against Spain's Running of the Bulls festival.

Wearing little more than bull horns and underwear and holding a sign which read "Pamplona: Bloodbath for Bulls" 25-year-old Loretta Hope from Redditch joined 75 others at the protest.

Organised by PETA and the Spanish animal-protection group AnimaNaturalis, activists poured gallons of fake blood on themselves ahead of the Running of the Bulls festival, during which dozens of bulls are struck and terrorised as they slip and slide down narrow streets on their way to being violently killed in Pamplona's bullring.

"Torturing and killing animals can never be justified as entertainment", said animal rights activist Hope.

"We're calling on Spain to end its widely condemned Running of the Bulls event and the bullfights that follow – and, with them, the horrific suffering and abuse of bulls."

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that "animals are not ours to use for entertainment" – has documented that in a typical bullfight, as many as eight men taunt, beat and stab a single bull with daggers and harpoon-like banderillas until it becomes weakened from blood loss.

Then, the matador stabs the animal with a sword and an executioner cuts his spinal cord.

Many bulls are paralysed but still conscious as they are chained and dragged out of the arena.