After taking part in the famous running of the bulls in Pamplona and narrowly making it to safety, most people would probably call it a day.
Jaime Alvarez decided to go back for a selfie.
The 46-year-old California man, one of two Americans gored at the Spanish festival on Sunday, says he ran most of the 913-yard course ahead of the bulls and scaled a fence to get to safety after they caught up with him in the Plaza de Toros bullring, People reports.
He says he then decide to go back and film “a 5-second video scene to say ‘Here I am, I did it.'”
Alvarez, who was visiting the city with his wife and daughter, was gored in the neck by a bull that ran at him after he returned to the ring. He was taken to safety by a bystander and spent 2.5 hours in surgery, the AP reports.
The bull’s horn went deep into his neck and doctors told him it was “beyond miraculous” that it didn’t hit a major artery.
“The impact was unlike anything I’ve ever felt. It was like being hit by a car or a truck,” Alvarez tells NBC 15. “It was scary.”
He says he hadn’t planned on joining the running of the bulls – and his wife and daughter tried to talk him out of it – but the energy of the festival was too strong to resist.
Alvarez, who works as a public defender in Santa Clara County, could be released from the hospital as soon as Tuesday. He says he will someday return to Pamplona, where the nine-day San Fermin fiesta attracts hundreds of runners and around 1 million revellers annually—but next time he will definitely be among the spectators. (Read more Pamplona stories.)
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