Pamplona, Spain - Eighty-five years after Ernest Hemingway first became enthralled by the traditional bull runs in Pamplona, the novelist's grandson John on Tuesday visited the northern Spanish city for the first time, officials said.

John Hemingway was received by Pamplona mayor Yolanda Barcina on the second day of this year's version of the bull runs, which were made famous by Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises.

John Hemingway, author of a family memoir called Strange Tribe, is a member of Los Gatos, one of the traditional fan clubs of the eight- day bull runs which are expected to bring up to a million visitors to the city of 185,000 this year.

Nearly 50 people were injured, most of them slightly, on Tuesday after half a dozen fighting bulls were let loose on the narrow streets of the old city centre.

The spectacle features hundreds of men known as mozos running alongside the animals, armed with nothing but folded newspapers. The bulls make a 825-metre dash for the bullring, where they are killed in an evening bullfight.

More than 70 participants were injured on Monday. The bull runs have claimed 14 lives since 1924. (dpa)