Spain bull run
In this file photo taken on July 09, 2019 participants run next to Jose Escolar Gil fighting bulls on the third bullrun of the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, northern Spain. Spain's best-known bull running festival in the northern town of Pamplona, held annually between July 6 and 14, has ben cancelled this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, city hall said on April 21, 2020. Image Credit: AFP

Madrid: Spain’s famous annual San Fermin bull-running festival has been cancelled in July due to the coronavirus crisis, the local authority said on Tuesday.

“As expected as it was, it still leaves us deeply sad,” said acting mayor Ana Elizalde in a statement from the local Pamplona town hall.

The festival, which draws thousands of participants and was made famous in Ernest Hemingway’s novel “The Sun Also Rises”, has seldom been cancelled in its history.

Deaths in Spain from the new coronavirus rose by 430 in the last 24 hours to a total of 21,282 on Tuesday, the government said.

That was higher than the previous day’s increase of 399, though officials are confident the pandemic is slowing in one of the world’s worst-hit nations.

The number of cases rose to 204,178 from 200,210, health ministry data showed.