Spain’s three hundred year love affair with bullfights is on the wane, none more so than in the country’s autonomous community of Catalonia, where the bloody spectacle could soon be banned. Later this month (June 22) politicians from the Catalan parliament are set to vote on changing their law on cruelty to animals that would abolish las corridas de toros in the autonomous community.

The campaign to ban bullfights in Catalonia has intensified in recent years. Barcelona declared itself anti-bullfighting in 2004 and another 22 Catalan municipalities have since followed suit. Last year, animal rights protesters handed over a half-a-million signed petition to the Catalan government calling for a ban. “I’m sure bullfighting will be banned in Catalonia quite soon,” said Manuel Cases, from ADDA, which is spearheading the campaign to have bullfights abolished.

In response, bullfighting fans set up a body called Defensa de la Fiesta to get public opinion back on their side and to encourage more people to watch las corridas de toros at Barcelona’s only surviving bullring at Monumental. “It would be a cultural and intellectual loss if bullfights were banned,” said Luis Corrales from Defensa de la Fiesta.

With passions running so high it was not surprising that the start of the bullfighting season got off to an acrimonious start two months ago in Catalonia. Hundreds of animal rights demonstrators gathered outside Monumental to protest against the weekly slaughter of bulls at the plaza.

While they were easily outnumbered by spectators - a mix of genuine aficionados and groups of bewildered tourists - their colourful placards and noisy chants clearly demonstrated the disgust they felt at the killing of 140 bulls at the stadium during the course of the season (April-September).

In the weeks prior to the bullfight, the Defensa de la Fiesta had distributed 30,000 posters across Barcelona and towns in Catalonia in a bid to get a decent turn out for the event (normally 2,000 flyers are printed for a bullfight). They also bussed in people from other parts of Spain and southern France to boost numbers but the plaza, which can seat about 17,000 people, still remained less than half full for the bullfight.

While the police prevented any serious clashes between the two rival groups, the protest served to highlight the extent of anti-bullfighting sentiment across Catalonia. According to Cases, 71% per cent of Catalans are opposed to bullfights. “The plaza at Monumental is virtually empty most Sundays during the bullfighting season,” he said. “It’s mainly curious tourists from the Costa Brava who fill the seats and then leave horrified after they’ve seen a couple of bulls killed,” he added.

Corrales, however, claims that 10% of the Catalan population supports bullfights. “Our survey shows that 700,000 people in Catalonia are bullfighting fans while only forty per cent support a ban.”

For the past three years the Asociación para la Defensa de los Derechos del Animal (the Association for the Defence of Animal Rights, or ADDA), alongside its partner, the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), have campaigned to have bullfights abolished in Catalonia. Its cause was given a timely boost in 2004 when Barcelona declared itself an anti-bullfighting city after the local council received a petition signed by a quarter of a million people. “The capital of Catalonia, Barcelona, must act like a capital and be a pioneer in the abolition of bullfighting,” said the city deputy mayor, Jordi Portabella, at the time.

A year earlier, children under the age of fourteen were banned from bullrings in Catalonia, which Cases claims has “stopped many tourists going to fights and further damaged the bullfighting business.”

Cases argues that dwindling ticket sales at Monumental might force the bullring’s private owners to seek alternative ways to make the site profitable. “The site could be transformed to include commercial or entertainment activities,” he said. Cases pointed out that the Barcelona’s former bullring at Les Arenes, near Plaça d’Espanya, is being redeveloped along commercial lines. “Half the year Monumental lies empty and unused so a local solution might be to create 200 to 500 small work units,” he added.

The business argument is not lost on bullfighting supporters. “The day that the owners of bullrings don’t earn money from the plazas in the day they will shut the plazas,” said Corrales. He’s convinced that bullfighting in Barcelona is still profitable and claims on average 14,000 people attend las corridas de toros each week throughout the season at Monumental.

He argues that the threat of abolition should not come from politicians. “Throughout the 300 year history of bullfighting we have always had people opposed to it, but that is not a problem,” he said. “The more worrying trend is politicians waving anti-bullfighting manifestoes - that should not happen. If the people of Barcelona don’t come to bullfights the owners will close the plazas - we don’t want politicians banning bullfighting.”

However, in recent years politicians have been slowly chipping away at the foundation of bullfighting activity in Catalonia - as well as banning children under 14 from bullfights, for the past eighteen years it has been illegal to build new bull rings in the autonomous community. Today, there are only three plazas de toros in Catalonia (compared to seven pre-1988), at Olot, Tarragona and Monumental.

Corrales may have to swallow another bitter pill next month when politicians from the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) party in the Catalan parliament launch an amendment to the existing Catalan law on cruelty to animals. At the moment the law bans all spectacles that hurts or kills animals, such as cockfighting. But bullfighting is exempt, maybe because of its historical longevity in Catalonia and Spain.” We want to change this anomaly and include bullfights within the law,” said Oriol Amorós, from the ERC and a member of the Catalan parliament.

Amorós dismisses the argument that bullfighting is part of the cultural fabric in Spanish and Catalan society. “Traditions such as bullfighting can be changed and modified,” he added.

“Earlier this century, horses didn’t have protection in bullfights which meant four to five horses were killed during an event. But the law was modified and the horse given protection, which serves as an example where tradition has been modified,” he said.

Amorós said their main aim was to protect the rights of animals which include their right not to suffer. “Mammals share a very similar nervous system amongst the species so the pain a bull feels would be felt by humans in the same way,” he stated.

Amorós claims bullfighting is on the decline across the rest of Spain, not just in Catalonia. “Bullfighting fans are old people while the younger generation are less interested whether [they be] in Catalonia or Spain,” he said.

He admits, however, the amendment is only aimed at banning bullfighting - other forms of cruelty to bulls, such as corre bou, where the public chase bulls through the streets and bouembolat, which involves putting lighted fires on bulls’ horns, would remain legal if the ban on bullfighting was introduced. These two forms of bull baiting are currently very popular in southern Tarragona. “At the moment we only want to ban bullfighting. In a few years, we will stop these others forms of cruelty to bulls,” Amorós said.

It is likely that the ERC will have the support of the other main opposition group in the Catalan parliament – the Convergència i Unió (CiU) - and as the two parties form a majority in the parliament, they are likely to win any vote. Curiously, members from the Catalan government’s ruling socialist group, the Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC), are likely to vote against the amendment alongside the smaller opposition conservative group, Partido Popular (PP).

This item submitted by: Richard McCrann