Bullfighting Soon to be Banned in Spain?
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.
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
thank you so much for the encouraging news! I’ve signed many petitions and hope deeply that they do indeed help.
No more bullfighting will be a grat progress for Espana where so many animals are slaughtered.
Y’know I am in general a supporter of animal rights, but when you compare bullfighting to industrial farming, the former is a non-issue. The number of bulls and the amount of pain they endure in the ring is so minute compared to that of factory farmed cows, it’s much ado about nothing. The death of a bull in the ring is comparable to what a wild cow would experience at the claws and teeth of a natural predator.
If Spanish and Latin American people decide they no longer have the stomach for the spectacle, that’s fine, but otherwise there are bigger fights where activists should be putting their energy.
I totally agree, I hope this kind of violence stop soon in every place in the world.
Good! This barbaric “sport” should have ended a LONG time ago!
RT
http://www.whos-watching.se.tc
I am catalan and I have to say bullfighting is not a general tradition in a lot of regions in Spain and we see that, not as a sport or art, but as a murder.
As a race, it is our duty to move foward, to be come better. No one can argue that the tourture and death of an animal that can think and feel for entertainment is good. It is not. We no longer watch gladiators or slaves being killed in the ring for entertainment, because we understand it is cruel and wouldn’t want to be in thier position. It’s the same with animals. To say there are bigger battles else where is cowardice.
I hope this partition succeeds.
Fuck you hippies and your “lets save the cute little animals” bullshit! Bullfighting is a sport that is a form of artistic mastery unimaginable in other compititions. It displays mans dominance over beast, but in a more fair manner. Having witnessed bullfighting first hand I can honestly say that it is not nearly as unhumane as you make it, even though that word is unfit for animals.
Ok Matthew , then we can come back to the the roman circus with gladiators because it was .. a form of artistic mastery unimaginable in other competitions …
Hi
I like bullfighting, I’m Spanish.To me it is an ART. May be we must start banning torture in Guantanamo and Abu Graib. Later on, stop torturing bulls and horses in rodeos all around USA. Then the US Citizens will have the moral right to talk about torturing animals in other countries.
Hypocrites.