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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: June 2007

Bullfighters seek cultural shield

 

LISBON-- The Spanish-based pro-bullfighting Platform for the Defence of the Fiesta Nacional debuted just in time to give a publicity boost to the International Anti-Bullfighting Summit held in Lisbon, Portugal, three weeks later.

PDFN director Luis Corrales in late April 2007 introduced half a dozen artists, actors, and other celebrities who pledged support for his petition to the United Nations Educational & Scientific Organization seeking World Heritage status for bullfighting.

UNESCO recognition, if conferred, would amount to an internationally influential declaration that bullfighting is an art form of global significance.

Corrales claimed to have 1,300 Spanish signees on a petition favoring bullfighting. He told Barcelona correspondent for The Independent newspaper group Graham Keeley that he hopes to attract 5,000 signees by year's end.

But 5,000 is not an impressive number of petition-signers in the Internet era, especially since 250,000 Catalonians signed petitions in 2004-2005 in opposition to bullfighting in Barcelona.

The pro-bullfighting PDFN celebrities were hugely outnumbered and exceeded in prominence many times over by the celebrity spokespersons for some of the 22 organizations participating in the International Anti-Bullfighting Summit.

The World Society for the Protection of Animals wrote "to all relevant contacts in UNESCO" in opposition to the scheme to give bullfighting World Heritage recognition, WSPA program officer Alyx Dow said. So did the other International Anti-Bullfighting Summit participants, many of them from organizations with more than 5,000 active members.

Convened by the Portuguese animal protection group ANIMAL, the British-based League Against Cruel Sports, and the Anti-Bullfighting Committee of The Netherlands & Belgium, the International Anti-Bullfighting Summit on May 17, 2007 brought together activists from Europe and Latin America for four days of intensive strategy discussion.

"Bullfights are rapidly coming to an end in Europe," declared ANIMAL vice president Rita Silva, hoping that the summit would become "a defining moment to make the end of bullfights happen even more rapidly then we had previously estimated."

The surest signs that it may soon be history are economic.

The owners of the last bullring in Barcelona, the Monumental Plaza de Toros, in December 2006 announced that the ring would close after the 2007 season due to lack of attendance.

"The company admitted that it lost more than £16,000 each time it held a bullfight," reported Daily Telegraph Madrid correspondent Fiona Govan.

"Two years ago," Govan recalled, "Barcelona declared itself an anti-bullfighting city, following a series of public protests. Another 38 Catalan municipalities have since followed, and the Catalan Parliament has debated a bill to extend existing animal cruelty laws to include bullfighting."

Catalonian political separatists have made bullfighting a symbol of Spanish dominion, to be rejected as part of re-establishing cultural independence lost more than 500 years ago. Attributing the collapse of bullfighting in Barcelona to the Catalonian independence movement, the Spanish bullfighting industry claims to still be strong in Andalusia, Extremadura, and Madrid. However, an October 2006 Gallup poll found that only 27% of Spaniards expressed any interest in watching bullfights, while 72% were either disinterested in bullfighting or opposed to it.

"Over the past 30 years interest has steadily fallen," Govan wrote, "starting at a high of 55% in 1971, dropping to 46% in 1980, and 31% in 1992."

Bullfighting has been sustained at many of the biggest arenas by tourism, but tourist interest has also declined.

Apparently learning that bullfight imagery no longer conveys the image that it did to past generations, both the Irish national airline Aer Lingus and Coca Cola recently withdrew television ads featuring bullfighting and running with bulls en route to the Pamplona bull ring, at request of the Irish Council Against Blood Sports.

Venezuela

Opposition to bullfighting in Latin America gathered legal momentum in early April 2007, when the Venezuelan parliament approved on first reading a new national "Law for the Protection of Domestic, Tamed, Wild and Exotic Animals at Liberty and in Captivity" which would restrain bullfighting, cockfighting, circus animal acts, and the Venezuelan version of rodeo, reinforce the existing law against dogfighting, and reform animal control.

Authored by Tchira state deputé Luis Tascon, whose district is a reputed bullfighting stronghold, the draft law declares that, "All animals are born into life as equals and have the same right to existence."

It stipulates that if animals are killed for any purpose, including consumption, the killing should be "instantaneous, painless, and should not cause distress."

"This law seems to be backed by supporters of President Hugo Chavez, who does not seem to like bullfighting," the League Against Cruel Sports assessed. "Due to his victory in the last elections, it is now more likely that this Bill will become an Act. This would put Venezuela 'up there' with Cuba, a political ally [of Venezuela], which banned bullfighting a long time ago."

Like Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and like the Catalonian nationalists, Chavez appears to associate bullfighting with the epoch of rule by a Spanish elite and their privileged descendants. Also like Castro, whose regime converted bullrings into baseball stadiums, Chavez is a baseball enthusiast, inclined to favor the sport as a participant rather than professional pastime.

The Tascon bill "is now going to several committees for discussion, and eventually, if the committees approve it, with or without amendments, it will be sent to the plenary for a vote," continued the League Against Cruel Sports. "It is possible that amendments would give bullfighting an exemption, as has happened with other animal protection legislation in Latin America, but it is equally possible that the bill will be passed as it is, and become one of the most advanced pieces of animal protection legislation in the world."

"All 167 members of the Venezuelan parliament support Chávez," acknowledged Inter-Press Service News Agency writer Humberto Márquez.

"However," Marquez warned, "there is no unanimity with regard to spectacles involving animals.

"Under the new law," Marquez elaborated, "bullfights could technically be held, but without the preliminary lancing of the bull by mounted picadors, nor the planting of barbed sticks or banderillas into the bull's neck, unless the bull is protected with body armor. And the bull must not be killed.

"The law would also regulate bull-tailing, in which riders on horses grab the tail of a running bull and pull the bull down," Marquez noted. "Cockfighting will only be permitted if the birds' talons and spurs are gloved.

"In addition to regulating bull fighting," Marquez wrote, "the draft law rules out trade or export of local fauna; sets out measures that municipalities must take to regulate the duties of pet owners and the creation of shelters for abandoned animals; and establishes fines of up to $1,800, or business closures, depending on the case, for violators."

Association for the Defense of Animals president Cristina Camilloni, in a wheelchair, on April 26, 2007 led about 200 supporters of the Tascon bill on a march through Caracas.

Mexico

In Tijuana, Mexico, bullfighting defenders resorted to an appeal based on culture and history just to obtain a public monument to the oldest and largest of the two bullrings there. Opened in 1938, rebuilt and expanded in 1957, the downtown ring was almost completely demolished in March 2007, but the work was halted on March 28 by intervention from the Instituto de Cultura de Baja California.

"Although the institute doesn't have the authority to prevent the ring's demolition," explained San Diego Union-Tribune staff writer Anna Cearley, "it argues that it has the power to put it on hold through June, when a committee will decide whether the structure is a landmark. Bullfight fans and members of historical groups say they hope a compromise can be reached with the owner to include a memorial to the bullring when the property is redeveloped."

The site reportedly belongs to a consortium including Alberto Bailleres, identified by Cearley as "one of Mexico's richest men. Bailleres runs a mining company, Industrias Peñoles," she wrote, "and a holding company, Grupo Bal, that includes Grupo Nacional Provincial and the high-end El Palacio de Hierro department stores," for which the bullring location might be attractive.

While Cearley was unable to obtain any comment from Bailleres, Baja Resort Advisors managing partner Gabriel Robles acknowledged that his company was involved in buying the property, and "said the land might be used for upscale high-rise housing."

Bullfighting, Robles said, is a "spectacle that is brutal to animals, where we make them bleed in public."