‘Torture Is Neither Art Nor Culture’ : Spring in Spain: Bullfights, Outcry

Each year about 24,000 bulls die in Spanish bullrings with a sword plunged into their hearts.

And each spring, at the start of the bullfighting season, Spanish animal lovers try to have the national fiesta banned.

“It is brutal, savage and cruel,” said Maria de Consuelo Polo of the Assn. for the Defense of Animal Rights.

Tacked to the wall at the group’s headquarters is a poster that shows a black bull with blood gushing from its half-open mouth and the slogan: “Torture is neither art nor culture.”

“If people only knew what happens to the bull,” Polo said, “it would move a stone.”

To bullfight fans, blood and gore are elements of an art form that fuses grace and courage. The bull’s death, they say, is the “moment of truth” in the ritual killing that has its roots in the Minoan civilization of Crete.

Novelist Ernest Hemingway wrote of the “pure classic beauty that can be produced by a man, an animal and a piece of scarlet draped on a stick.” He likened the bullfight, or corrida , to a tragic drama.

“What has stabbing a bull to do with Greek tragedy?” asked Polo, adding that linking the bullfight to art obscures its horror.

“The torture starts even before the bull is brought into the arena,” one of the association’s leaflets claims.

It points to practices that include sawing the bull’s horns down to the tip of the nerve to sap its vigor, rubbing petroleum jelly in its eyes to blur its vision and spiking the bull’s genitals with pins to make it restless.

The bullfight, in the leaflet’s description, is a horrible spectacle in which the bull is jabbed and lanced in the neck and harpooned in the withers before being stabbed by an executioner with a sword.

“People see our posters and pamphlets and they call us to say that they had never thought of the cruelty of it all,” association treasurer Lucia Yelo said.

Since 1984, when the group launched its first anti-bullfight drive through newspaper ads and posters, membership has grown from a few hundred to 5,000. But lack of funds keeps it from reaching a wider audience.

“To make a real impact, we would have to take on the tourist trade,” Yelo said. “It still uses the Spain of bulls and matadors to draw tourists, and the bullfight industry survives thanks to tourism.”

About 31 million spectators attend bullfights each year. Ticket sales bring in $100 million. From cattle hands to ring sweepers, nearly 150,000 people are employed in the business.

An easier objective, the association believes, is making cruelty to animals punishable by law. In April, the association began gathering signatures to press the government to enact anti-cruelty legislation.

“Spain is the only country in Europe that has no such laws,” Polo said. “If we can get that in the penal code, it will be a step in the right direction.”

Most Spaniards do not rate bullfights very highly. A recent survey by the culture ministry showed that 50.8% of Spaniards dislike bullfights and only 34% enjoy them.

Anthropologist Julio Caro Baroja suggests that the bullfight is one of the country’s least popular fiestas.

“The bullfight is a boring and tiresome cliche that weighs heavily on Spain, and foreigners are largely to blame,” Baroja said. “They deride Spain for its bullfights, but they’re the ones who fill the bullrings.”

Whether or not they are fans, most Spaniards tend to resent outside moves to ban the corrida.

Bullfight critic Joaquin Vidal reproached European officials for suggesting that the spectacle ought to be outlawed when Spain joined the Common Market in January.

“A lot of other European customs would have to be abolished along with the bullfight, including fox and deer hunting,” he said.

Two Popes and several Spanish kings tried to abolish the bullfight, only to see it flourish clandestinely.

In time, the bullfight may just fade away. Animal lovers take heart that soccer long ago took the place of bullfighting as Spain’s favorite spectacle. The association has printed a bumper sticker that reads: “Bullfights no , soccer si .”