Bullfighting Ban in Spain

567 Views 10 Replies 9 Participants Last post by maccabeth, Jul 30, 2010

bap

Discussion Starter · Jul 28, 2010

<h2 class="subhead" style="padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:0px;font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;line-height:1.2;font-weight:normal;font-size:18px;font:normal normal bold 13px/normal Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a class="hide" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2010/0728/Catalonia-votes-for-less-death-in-the-afternoon-with-bullfighting-ban#nextParagraph" style="padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;color:rgb(32,93,135);width:1px;height:1px;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;display:inline;" target="_blank">Skip to next paragraph</a></h2>
Catalan lawmakers cited European humane values in putting the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2010/0728/Catalonia-outlaws-bullfighting.-What-would-Hemingway-say" style="padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;color:rgb(32,93,135);font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">first ban on bullfighting inside Spain</a> today. But ending the ancient rite is widely seen as an opportunity in Catalonia to tout the region’s old dream of separation from Spain.
The ban on the “sport” sparked by a citizen’s petition of 180,000, passed 68 to 55 in the legislature of Catalonia in northeast Spain. It came days after the famed annual running of the bulls through the streets of Pamplona, always an ecstatic local festival though one viewed with increasing skepticism in the rest of Europe.
It also comes days after more than a million Catalonians gathered in Barcelona to protest a Madrid constitutional court ruling that Catalonia could not be defined as a nation. Animal rights groups, <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0623/p15s02-woeu.html" style="padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;color:rgb(32,93,135);font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">popular in the region</a>, declared victory and bullfighting industry officials predicted dire effects on the economy. Spain's conservative Popular Party opposed the law and will challenge it in court.
“In spite of a vegetararian varnish over this affair, Catalonia has always seen the anti-bullfight struggle as a political issue with a nationalist undertone,” argues Salvador Boix, a political analyst with the Spanish daily El Pais.
However, Joan Puigcercos, a pro-Catalan independence politician, told reporters that “it it not a question of politics, nor of national identity, but rather about animal suffering.”
Bullfighting in Spain has been declining for years, even as it lingers on powerfully in the national imagination. The spectacle of a lithe matador in his “suit of lights” facing off against the deadly horns of 1000-pound snorting bull is romanticized globally in the masculine prose of writers like Ernest Hemingway, who found the fights a metaphor for honor, struggle, and relations between the sexes in works like “Death in the Afternoon.”
But bullfights have undergone some de-mythologizing. Studies depict them as ghoulish struggles in which a bull with horns shaved to make them less dangerous perishes after a prolonged encounter and multiple stab wounds. In the past 20 years no matadors have died in Spanish bullfights, putting the honorable outcome of a “contest” between man and beast more in the framework of professional wrestling.
"There are some traditions that can't remain frozen in time as society changes. We don't have to ban everything, but the most degrading things should be banned," a Catalan member of parliament, Josep Rull, told Reuters today.
Catalonia, with its seaport Barcelona, has long been one of the more cosmopolitan and industrialized regions in Spain; it has retained a proud cultural and linguistic tradition, and a sense of somehow being “other” in Spain, often in opposition to Madrid -- where bullfighting remains much more popular. Catalonia was a stronghold of the Spanish republican left, immortalized in George Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia” – which brought it suppression by the Franco dictatorship.
After today’s Catalan vote, Claire Staronzinski, part of a French anti-bullfighting league, described it as “a symbolic vote that foretells what is going to happen in France in several years…It shows …. an anti-bullfight feeling…including in our own country.”

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wherestheportojohn

· #2 · Jul 28, 2010

I saw that this morn.
HOLY CRAP, that is a big move in Catalan Country!
 
Back in the '70s, I attended a couple of fights in northern and southern Spain.
I was disgusted...not allowed to boo or turn my back, as I was with a native host...but I was horrified!
 
One of the fights was the Portuguese style...all done on horseback...beautiful to watch the horses, but not so wonderful when they'd get rammed [no goring, as they wore protection...but were still knocked about pretty badly]
<img alt="" src="http://files.kickrunners.com/smilies/sad5.gif" style="width:17px;height:16px;" title="">

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Mrtambalynman

· #3 · Jul 28, 2010

I was surprised to hear of that. Interesting that it was the tourists that were supporting the "sport" in Catalonia.

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jcumming

· #4 · Jul 29, 2010

Went to a bullfight in Spain once.
 
Once was one time too many.

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Grizzly

· #5 · Jul 29, 2010

Catalonia extends into France - the spiritual heart of Catalonia is the Pic de Canigou, or Canigou peak on the border between France and Spain in the Pyrenees. Bullfighting is very much a sport in southern France, particularly in urban centers like Beziers. Maybe the Catalonian nationalist spirit will help sway the local governments in Languedoc and Rousillon.

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bap

Discussion Starter · #6 · Jul 29, 2010

Maybe it will inspire North Americans to look at rodeos, which are already banned in some European countries.

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yar

· #7 · Jul 29, 2010

And NASCAR. While we're at it, maybe we can ban that, too.
 
yar

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Floridaboiler

· #8 · Jul 29, 2010

Why would you ban rodeos?

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maccabeth

· #9 · Jul 30, 2010

<div class="quote-container">Quote:
<div class="quote-block">Originally Posted by Floridaboiler <a href="/forum/thread/69161/bullfighting-ban-in-spain#post_1927879"><img alt="View Post" class="inlineimg" src="/img/forum/go_quote.gif" style="border:0px solid;"></a> Why would you ban rodeos?
 
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Because animals aren't objects for entertainment.
 
Yar- you've missed the point. What would Nascar have to do with bull fighting or rodeos?

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mmoonptdeux

· #10 · Jul 30, 2010

<div class="quote-container">Quote:
<div class="quote-block">Originally Posted by maccabeth <a href="/forum/thread/69161/bullfighting-ban-in-spain#post_1928123"><img alt="View Post" class="inlineimg" src="/img/forum/go_quote.gif" style="border:0px solid;"></a> Because animals aren't objects for entertainment.
 
Yar- you've missed the point. What would Nascar have to do with bull fighting or rodeos?
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Kinda' leads to an interesting debate which I'm sure depends on personal perspective: to what level should animals be "subservient" to human whims (excluding the whole vegan/carnivore debate)?
 
I agree - the bottom basement cruelty of things like bullfighting, dog fighting, etc. is stuff I definitely don't care for.
 
Then you have the next line of stuff (rodeos, circuses, amusement park shows, etc.) that some don't mind and others have a big problem
 
Go down to stuff which can be more benign but still irks some - horse and dog racing, dog shows and dog sports (jumping, frisbee tossing, obstacle courses, etc.), animals in movies, etc.
 
Then you get down to the more hardcore members (folks in PETA, for example) don't care for that tend to have a lot of societal benefit - mainly dogs and other animals that herd, provide guide services for the blind, are used in drug and explosives detection, police dogs, etc....or even just the whole general idea of having pets.

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maccabeth

· #11 · Jul 30, 2010

I'm against any "use" of animals where it may/will get hurt and/or die. So pretty much all the reasons you listed except for the last one.
 
It's late here and I'm in bed already or I'd elaborate!

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