Its orange sands have witnessed delight and death. Generations of matadors strutted their way across Barcelona’s Monumental bullring, drawing roars of approval from the crowds as they tormented the hulking bulls with their scarlet capes, before killing them with a sword-thrust between the shoulder blades.
Now, however, bullfighting is to be banned from Barcelona and the rest of the northeastern region of Catalonia after the local parliament on Wednesday dealt a blow to Spain’s most emblematic pastime and unleashed a political battle over what some see as a threatened cultural treasure.
Deputies voted by 68 to 55 in favor of a people’s petition calling on the bullfight to be banished from a region that once played host to some of the world’s greatest fights. The last matador in Catalan history will sink his sword into the last half-tonne fighting bull at the end of next year, with the ban starting in 2012.
PHOTO: AFP
“It is the worst attack on culture since our transition to democracy,” Catalan poet Pere Gimferrer said.
While some mourned the loss of a cultural jewel, the vote was hailed by animal rights campaigners worldwide. Ricky Gervais and Pamela Anderson were among the 140,000 who signed an international petition to the Catalan parliament.
“It sickens me to know that people are still paying money to see an animal suffering in such a horrific way,” Gervais said before the vote.
About 13,500 fighting bulls die in Spain every year — many in bullfights funded by local authorities who are estimated to pay out up to 550 million euros (US$714 million) in subsidies.
In Spain, critics pointed to dark, if barely disguised, political motives. Bullfight fans claimed many Catalan nationalist deputies had voted out of spite, because the fighting bull is an emblem of Spain — where it is known as the “national fiesta” — rather than of Catalonia.
The local El Periodico newspaper reported that several nationalist deputies had decided to back the ban only after Spain’s constitutional court struck down parts of the region’s 2006 autonomy charter earlier this month. At least 430,000 people, or 6 percent of all Catalans, protested on July 10 in Barcelona against the court’s decision, which declared Catalonia was not legally a nation.
Just as Britain’s fox-hunting ban mixed animal rights with class politics, so the bullfight ban brought together animal welfare and Catalan identity politics, local commentators agreed.
“Some of our people will back the ban on the basis that if they are going to sink our charter, we will sink their bulls,” a regional deputy from the Convergence and Union nationalist coalition told El Periodico.
Animal rights campaigners were upset that identity politics had been brought to play.
“The issue is a moral one, not a nationalist one,” said Salvador Giner, head of the Catalan Studies Institute in Barcelona. “Bear-baiting was suppressed long ago and this is the same logic. Are we a modern nation, or are we going back to the middle ages?”
Giner said the bullfight had a long history in Catalonia.
“But it is a barbarous tradition,” he said.
He also denounced those who voted against bullfighting, but protected the correbous, a form of bull-taunting popular in village fiestas in southern Catalonia.
“That should be banned as well, even if politicians lose votes. That would be consistent,” he said.
In recent years, the matador Jose Tomas — beloved of many Spanish left-wing intellectuals and artists — had brought fresh life to the Monumental, but in general the bullfight has been in decline in Catalonia for decades. There is only one major ring functioning in Barcelona, with just 15 fights a year.
“This is dictatorship,” the Catalan bullfighter Serafin Marin said. “It is not a cruel show. It is a show that creates art: where you get feelings and a fight between a bull and person, where the person or the bull can lose their life.”
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not