Spanish matador Miguel Angel Perera performs a pass to a bull during a bullfight in The Ventas bullring in Madrid.ANDREA COMAS
Spain's most potent symbol of national unity became a powerful sign of the growing divide between one of the country's most autonomous areas and the rest of the nation on Wednesday, after lawmakers in Catalonia voted to make the region the first on the Spanish mainland to outlaw bullfighting.
Parliamentarians who voted in favour of the ban said they acted in keeping with Catalonia's progressive political tendencies, especially when it comes to protecting animal rights.
But coming as it did just three weeks after one of the biggest pro-independence marches ever in Catalonia, the vote was portrayed by conservative politicians and commentators as another way for the region in northeastern Spain to mark its differences and promote Catalan identity.
"The idea is to ban everything that is Spanish," the centre-right newspaper El Mundo wrote in an editorial. Added the Madrid-based daily ABC: "They say it's about bulls but it's really about Spain."
Once hugely popular, bullfighting has lost much of its following in recent years. Polls show that only about a quarter of Spaniards are interested in the corrida, down from more than a third in 1999.
But nowhere is it less popular than in Catalonia, which has led the fight to do away with what many Catalans see as a pointlessly cruel pursuit. In 2003, the region passed a sweeping animal-protection law that banned towns without bullrings from building them and prohibited children under 14 from attending. The following year the capital, Barcelona, declared itself an "anti-bullfighting" city. While the only bullfighting ring left in Catalonia is in Barcelona, it stages just 15 fights a year (out of about 1,000 nationwide) and is rarely sold out.
The initiative to ban bullfighting picked up steam about 18 months ago, when the group Prou (Enough) launched a petition that attracted more than 180,000 signatures.
In the last few months, the debate has become a flashpoint in the ongoing argument about Spanish identity and how much autonomy the 7.5 million people who live in Catalonia should have.
Bullfighting, which one Spanish news website says is appreciated for its "fertility, sovereignty, pride, manhood and potency," has been ingrained in the Spanish psyche for centuries. Right-wing dictator General Francisco Franco promoted it as a unifying spectacle and the national government still offers financial support. While Catalans fought to ban bullfighting, local governments in Madrid and other areas have declared it an integral part of the national identity.
Intellectuals and artists also got involved in the debate. Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa recently described the corrida as "a form of spiritual and emotional nourishment as intense and enriching as a concert by Beethoven, or a comedy by Shakespeare."
The debate reached its peak this month, just as the Spanish constitutional court handed down a long-awaited ruling that denied Catalonia the right to declare itself a "nation." On July 10, more than a million people, some of whom carried banners stating "We are a nation, we decide ourselves," marched in Barcelona in protest.
After a debate during which one opponent of bullfighting stripped naked and covered himself with fake blood, the regional parliament in Catalonia passed the ban by a vote of 68-55. Conservative politicians and representatives of the bullfighting industry claimed some parties were playing to Catalonia's newly inflamed nationalist sentiment and hoped to use their vote to make gains in regional elections later this year.
But Jordi Portabella, from the leftist separatist party ERC, said the vote was about nothing more than ending a cruel practice.
"We are not talking about identities here, but about very serious ethical arguments against the ill-treatment of animals," he said.
Jose Rull, a member of parliament for the Catalonian National Party, CIU, said Catalonia had simply chosen to move with modern times.
"There are some traditions that can't remain frozen in time as society changes," he said.
"We don't have to ban everything, but the most degrading things should be banned."
Special to The Globe and Mail