Spanish bull festival claims 12th life after 66-year-old is 'gored in the heart'

A video of the incident was posted on Spanish news websites

Participants run in front of Fuente Ymbro's bulls during the fourth 'encierro' (bull-run) of the San Fermin Festival in Pamplona (AFP PHOTO / MIGUEL RIOPA / Getty Images)

A man has died after being 'gored in the heart' at a bull run in Spain.

The 66-year-old was taking part in a village festival in Segovia, a province northwest of Madrid, when he was charged by the animal and dragged several metres across the ground.

A video of the incident was posted on Spanish news websites. This brings the latest death toll by goring in Spanish festivals this year to a dozen, making it one of the deadliest in the sport’s history.

Last week in Lerin, a town in Navarre, footage filmed by a spectator showed the moment a young bull charged a 29-year-old and hit him in the stomach.

The man was airlifted to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead.

In July, a French tourist died during a bull-running event in Alicante. The death came as Spain's most famous bull-running festival, San Fermin in Pamplona, concluded.

And Francisco Rivera Ordóñez, one of Spain's star matadors, was rushed to hospital in serious condition after being gored through the groin during a contest in the north eastern town of Huesca.

The bull breeders' association UCTL said earlier this week that the number of deaths this year represented less than 0.1 per cent of participants, which number in the millions.

Over the past few years attitudes have changed towards the treatment of bulls in Spain and its traditional events, such as the “bous a la mar” in the village of Denia, where the bull is chased into the sea.

Many of the new left-wing administrations in Spanish towns have pulled subsidies from events involving bulls, and are considering holding referendums on whether to continue them.

Additional reporting by Reuters