July 10 (Bloomberg) -- A 27-year-old Spanish man died after a fighting bull gored him in the neck at the Pamplona bull- running festival that was made famous by Ernest Hemingway and attracts thousands of foreigners each year.

The victim, Daniel Jimeno Romero from Alcala de Henares, a town near Madrid, was wounded in the neck and chest, the regional government of Navarra said in a statement on its Web site. Five of 11 people injured were released from the hospital. The others include a 61-year-old American man in intensive care, a 63-year-old American with less serious injuries, a 20-year-old Londoner with a thigh wound and a 24-year-old Argentine.

Each morning for a week, thousands of thrill-seekers dressed in traditional red and white clothes cram into a cobbled, winding road in the center of the northern Spanish city, as six half-ton fighting bulls and several steers are released behind them. The animals race through the slippery streets and into the bull ring, where they face a bullfighter’s sword in the evening.

Excluding today’s death, fifteen people have been killed in the bull running since 1910, according to the official Web site of the festival. The event was made famous by Hemingway’s 1920s novel “The Sun Also Rises,” and is now popular with tourists from countries including the U.S. and Australia.

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The victim had a tattoo on his right arm and was wearing a ring with the inscription “Cris. Nov. 25 2003,” according to newswire Efe. That was the year of the previous fatality, when a 63-year-old bull-running veteran called Fermin Etxeberria died after more than two months in hospital, according to the festival’s Web Site. A 22-year-old American was gored to death in 1995.

The bulls reach a speed of up to 24 kilometers (15 miles) an hour, and there are an average 200 to 300 injuries a year, according to the festival Web site. Runners often party through the night ahead of the 8 a.m. chase, in which the only protection against the bulls is the traditional rolled-up newspaper. Visitors to the event in the past included actress Ava Gardner, film director Orson Welles and playwright Arthur Miller.

To contact the reporters on this story: Emma Ross-Thomas in Madrid at erossthomas@bloomberg.net; Brian McGee in Madrid at bmcgee3@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 10, 2009 10:39 EDT