"Each year since, about 100,000 people have descended upon this usually quiet area for nine exciting, dangerous days in March, running, skipping, hopping, jumping and dancing through the world's most prolonged (and waiver-free) display of pyrotechnics. The festival includes three main events of powder-keg glory, as well as carnival rides, kiosks hawking regional street food, musical concerts, dance performances, and a ceremonial release of paper balloons."
"A holdover from the original saint day, the festival's main event is a pamplonada, a blazing spin on the running of the bulls. Some 250 toritos —intricate bull-shaped frames festooned with fireworks—are paraded with great fanfare through the streets of Tultapec for as many as six hours. These tall, flaming and expensive bovines are built of wood, wire, dried plants and cartonería (a rock-hard form of papier mâche) by teams of 30-40 people. Some of these teams are descendants of local fireworks-guild members, and others travel from other fireworks production centers around the state of Mexico, such as San Pedro de la Laguna and Almoloya de Juárez.
Another of the festival's surefire crowd-pleasers is the contest of castillos, 80- to 100-foot-tall constructions of castles that whirr, slide, zoom and spin when lit. These huge, ingenious Rube Goldberg-esque creations can take as many as 15 days to build, and as long as a half-hour to go through all their showy machinations."
https://www.fest300.com/festivals/national-pyrotechnic-festival
"A holdover from the original saint day, the festival's main event is a pamplonada, a blazing spin on the running of the bulls. Some 250 toritos —intricate bull-shaped frames festooned with fireworks—are paraded with great fanfare through the streets of Tultapec for as many as six hours. These tall, flaming and expensive bovines are built of wood, wire, dried plants and cartonería (a rock-hard form of papier mâche) by teams of 30-40 people. Some of these teams are descendants of local fireworks-guild members, and others travel from other fireworks production centers around the state of Mexico, such as San Pedro de la Laguna and Almoloya de Juárez.
Another of the festival's surefire crowd-pleasers is the contest of castillos, 80- to 100-foot-tall constructions of castles that whirr, slide, zoom and spin when lit. These huge, ingenious Rube Goldberg-esque creations can take as many as 15 days to build, and as long as a half-hour to go through all their showy machinations."
https://www.fest300.com/festivals/national-pyrotechnic-festival