Catalonia bullfighting ban: Cornered by the cape crusaders?

Last week, Catalonia became the first Spanish region on the mainland to ban bullfighting. Cue much jubilation among celebrities such as Ricky The Office Gervais and Pamela Baywatch Anderson, who, along with assorted animal rights groups, want it prohibited everywhere. Yet on closer examination, the ban looks more like a spot of fancy capework, performed by the troublesome Catalan legislature in pursuit of its separatist agenda. “What we are really saying,” explained a commentator in Barcelona’s largest newspaper, El Periodica, “is that Spain is the home of bullfighting, and if we don’t have bullfights, it stands to reason that we can’t be Spanish.” Ole! Elsewhere in the country, the reaction to the ban was restrained. Catalonia’s allegiance to the corrida has long been considered suspect. During the Spanish Civil War, the Catalan republican forces made a particular point of attacking the ranchers who raised fighting bulls. “One less torero, one less fascist,” went the cry. In bullfighting’s southern heartlands, last week’s ban was seen less as a vote of conscience than as a sucking-up to the Leftist euro-establishment, which the legislature hopes will back its campaign for independence. In this sense, bullfighting is an intensely political issue. In another sense, it always has been. The first serious attempt to ban it was made in the 16th century by Pope Pius V, who issued – appropriately – a papal bull, stating that the practice imperilled the souls of all who participated in it. Two hundred years later, King Philip V of Spain, a passionate opponent of the corrida, prohibited the aristocracy from fighting bulls, a measure that paved the way for the professional matador class that emerged from Andalucia in the late 18th century. In 2007, more than 200 MEPs voted to withdraw European Union subsidies for the breeders of fighting bulls...more