The romantic imagery painted of Spanish bullfighting in Ernest Hemingway’s famous book The Sun Also Rises might soon be the stuff of history. Spain is edging ever closer to banning the sport.
Thanks to a petition with 180,000 signatures, the regional government of Spain’s northeastern Catalonia area will soon debate banning the sport tied so closely to Spain’s image. Recent polling indicates that less than 30% of Spanish citizens like bullfighting, reflecting an overall trend that animals should be treated more humanely.
Of course, it is likely that opposition to banning the sport will be noisy, especially when it’s a multimillion dollar generating industry that’s subsidized by the Spanish government. Then there are also those fans to whom the sport is a profound tradition to be upheld, like a ten year old matador who set a Guiness World Record for killing six young bulls in one weekend despite protests. He later declared, “No one can stop me fighting… I was born a bullfighter and will die one.” At least this boy has been banned from bullfighting in Spain and now must practice his trade in Latin America.
The famous city of Barcelona has also made efforts to stop the torture that bulls face in the arena. In 2004 they passed a declaration that condemned bullfighting, but came short of banning it. 125,000 people still attended bullfights in Barcelona’s Monumental Bullring in 2008, showing the declaration alone was not entirely effective. In Spain’s Canary Islands, however, the sport has been successfully banned.
But now as the Catalonia region of Spain moves to ban the sport, we can only hope others will follow. About 250,000 bulls are estimated to die each year in the nine countries that allow the sport, with 60,000 of the kills occurring in Spain.
Awareness about the need to protect animal rights has become much stronger across Europe in recent years. Earlier this month the European Union banned seal products in condemnation of Canada’s brutal seal hunt.
For more information about the effort to ban bullfighting, visit the webpage for a Bullfighting-Free Europe.
Photo Credit: J>Ro on Flickr under a Creative Commons license
Well Chloe some people (the horrible people they are) think that bullfighting is a way to prevent death upon their people and its been a tradition of their kind for so long then….. why stop it if its all ready begun and you type like a first grader
bull fighting is bad, boo bullfighting, these people are horrible (first grade terms: mean)
i hate evry single person who is spanish for doing this its horrible and i wish that these stupid horrible spanish people would be the ones getting stupid sharp stick prodded in them tbh i wish all spanish people who do this die and soon its all horrible and i really dislike this its a horrible thing to do and i cant believe people do it as a sport. Yes it should be banned ……
Today Catalonian parlament has banned bullfighting. I'm spanish and I hope that this action will be the beginning of a national ban of that torture, but it's hard because bullfighting moves a lot of money and it's very related with our tourist image.
Spain is one of the least developed countries in Europe with a history of a centuries of dictatorship. Abuse of animal and human rights and injustice in general is deeply engrained in Spanish history and mentality.
President Zapatero only recently realized that there was a crisis in Europe and Spain and was entirely surprised when his countrie’s credit rating got downgraded. Does he know that there is bullfighting in Spain? Perhaps nobody informed him…
I am glad they are working on banning bull fighting. This is so in humane. They are catching the bulls and chasing them down and spearing them with those spears decorated with streamers and other stuff… it essentially is like torture and is cruelty to animals. I though we supported being humane, to animals this would be considered cruelty to animals… its just so wrong i only hope they will realize that too.