Spanish pedestrians to the rescue as escaped bull runs amok in Málaga

A still of the moment the bull charges the pedestrian... watch the vid to see what happens next

You can see some wonderful sights in the ancient Andalusian city of Málaga. There’s the Pablo Picasso Museum, the stunning Gibralfaro and the old Alcazaba.

But sightseers and tourists got more than they bargained for last week: the sight of an escaped bull, intermittently strolling, rampaging and charging through the city’s leafy streets.

A video of the bull attacking cars and then charging a seemingly suicidal pedestrian has been garnering thousands of hits online. But the young man who tackles the bull evidently knows what he’s doing – just watch how he expertly dodges the bull’s charge and wrestles it to the ground before others rush in to help restrain it…

We should back up a little. Firstly, the bull in question weighed an estimated 200kg and was, by all accounts, a juvenile. A fully grown bull of that breed can weigh a tonne at least, and the bystander wouldn’t have stood a chance.

So how did a bull come to be walking down a busy city street in the middle of the day? Reports in local newspaper Diario Sur suggest that the bull escaped during transit through the city on the way to a nearby farm.

During his brief moments of freedom, the bull rammed two cars and injured two people, fortunately not seriously. Locals also expressed their relief that the incidents happened during school hours, so no children from the nearby school were out on the streets.

Thankfully, such incidents are pretty much unprecedented. Unless you’re a budding matador (and the guy in the red t-shirt if you’re reading: have you ever thought about it?) then having a rampant bull charge at you is restricted to the infamous running of the bulls festival in Pamplona.

Down here in Andalucía, the locals prefer to keep their bulls safely out of harm’s way. Usually.