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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: September 2007

Spain turns against bullfighting

 

MADRID--"Pursued across open countryside, jabbed at with spears and finally fatally stabbed by a man wielding a lance, a bull called Enrejado suffered a long, frightening and sadistic death in front of an eager crowd at Tordesillas, Castilla y León, northern Spain," recounted Guardian correspondent Gilles Tremlett from Madrid on September 13, 2007, but unlike British correspondents of a generation ago, his subject was not perceived Spanish indifference toward animal suffering.

Rather, it was Spanish outrage against such events, which are increasingly viewed as rural anachronisms.

"Pictures of the wounded, blood-drenched animal being stabbed with the lance were published on the front page of El País, Spain's biggest-selling daily newspaper, as it denounced the survival of this primitive, medieval spectacle," Tremlett wrote.

"The regional government of Castilla y León, run by the conservative People's party, has formally declared the festival to be 'of interest to tourists.' Local people, however, shooed photographers and journalists away so they could not witness or capture the final moment of death."

That was a bit of an understatement. Video posted to <www.youtube.com> on September 11 showed a mob beating a female reporter and the videographer who recorded the attack, while their studio anchor team watched in helpless shock.

"They allow the bull to be traversed by spears but do not want critics to cast their eyes on it," wrote Carmen Moran of El País. "This event gives off a powerful odour of poorly interpreted manliness."

The Tordesillas bullfighters beat the TV crew about six months after the government-owned Television Española network dropped live coverage of bullfighting, "ending a decades-old tradition out of concern that the deadly duel between matador and beast is too violent for children," reported Daniel Woolls of Associated Press.

Bullfighters and bullfighting promoters have been fuming ever since.

"Television Espanola's first broadcast in 1948 was a bullfight in Madrid," Woolls recalled. "But for the first time in the network's history, none of its channels have shown live fights this season, only taped highlights on a late-night program for aficionados.

"In practical terms," Woolls assessed, "the unpublicized decision by the Socialist government is largely symbolic. Of the hundreds of bullfights during the March-October season, state-run TV only tended to broadcast about a dozen. Pay TV channels and stations owned by regional governments are full of live bullfights."

But the symbolism is significant. Observed Tremlett, "At times of political tension the regime of rightwing dictator General Francisco Franco reputedly programmed bullfights against protests. How many people, the logic apparently went, were going to join a march for freedom if the sex symbol matador Manuel Benítez El Cordobés was on the television?" The bullfighting audience today is middle-aged or older, a demographic of declining value to broadcasters, and the celebrities of interest to younger TV viewers tend to cultivate images of kindness toward animals.

Bullfighting in France drew critical notice for similar reasons in mid-August 2007, reported Guardian Paris correspondent John Lichfield. "A TV ad calling for a ban on bullfighting has been declared unacceptable-- because it shows violent scenes at bullfights," Lichfield wrote. "If stabbing and slaughtering bulls in public is too violent for family viewing on prime-time television, critics ask, why are children allowed to attend bullfights?

"The decision by France's advertising watchdog has drawn attention to the bizarre legal status in France of "Spanish-style bullfighting," Lichfield continued. "Bullfighting is banned in France, but legally tolerated in those areas which can claim an unbroken local tradition. In practice, French courts have allowed bullfighting to spread to towns in the south where no such tradition exists.

"The true bullfighting tradition in France is not La Corrida, which arrived from Spain in the 1850s," Lichfield noted. "The French tradition, in which the bull survives to fight again and again, is still to be found in the Camargue, in the Rhône delta, and in the Landes, south of Bordeaux. The bullfighter or bullfighters have to retrieve ribbons tied to the horns," a much more dangerous undertaking--if anyone frightens the bull--than wounding and killing a bull with long weapons.