A man believed to be Maltese, wearing a T-shirt with a vulgar message in Maltese on the back and an eight-pointed cross on the front, was lucky to escape injury during the Pamplona bull run two days ago.

A picture which featured in several newspapers abroad, shows the man trapped by a bull and other runners trying to push the animal away.

One of the 'rescuers' later wrote to his girlfriend: “Never leave a man down, go the Power, wish me luck, love u!”

Dozens of people are injured each year in the runs, most of them in falls. Fifteen people have died after being gored since record-keeping began in 1924. Four were gored this year but no one has been killed.

The bulls are killed in afternoon bullfights in the ring.

The nine-day street-partying festival was immortalised in Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises and attracts thousands of foreign tourists.