Is bullfighting an intrinsic part of Spanish identity or is it an anachronistic and cruel practice that needs to be eradicated? The world of bullfighting may try hard not to enter into this debate, but the news has caught up with it and confronted it again with the threats that have weighed heavily on it for a good decade.
In February, the Supreme Court ruled that bullfighting is “an intangible asset of Spanish heritage”, following a complaint by the Toro de Lidia Foundation, which defends the interests of the spectacle in the country that saw it. be born. The latter was thus reacting to the decision of the Ministry of Culture to exclude any bullfighting show from the “culture check for youth”, a card allowing anyone who blows out their 18 candles to benefit, during this year, from activities cultural – cinema, music, theatre, books, etc. – for a value of 400 euros.
Culture Minister Miquel Iceta now finds himself in deep embarrassment and faced with a dilemma: obey the judges or find a trick to circumvent their injunction and ensure that bullfighting events are not included in this “cheque”.
The socialist minister is part of a left-wing coalition government, in which Unidas Podemos – the local equivalent of LFI – vomits bullfighting and pushes for it to be abolished forever under its oft-repeated slogan: “Torture is not culture. Here then is Miquel Iceta caught between the anvil of the law and the hammer of political loyalty. For the time being, he observes silence on this ultra-sensitive question.
The affair of the “youth cultural check”, far from being anecdotal, is indicative of the high degree of conflictuality reigning within Spanish society, and even more in its political arena, with regard to “Lidia” – Spanish term to designate bullfighting. A real trench warfare.
On the one hand, Unidas Podemos, animal associations, and a large part of the population, in favor of bringing the final blow to a “barbaric tradition”: a recent poll by the digital newspaper El Español indicated that 56% of Spaniards are in favor to prohibit or limit bullfighting. On the other, the three main right-wing formations, the sector of the economy that lives off it, and an army of aficionados.
In the middle, the indifferent, or even the socialists in power, who have linked their destiny to Unidas Podemos, and who wish to satisfy them on this level. As proof, an unprecedented law, approved in December, and granting pets ample rights and the status of “living beings endowed with feeling”.
The agglomeration of Madrid, Andalusia, the two Castiles – governed by the right or the extreme right – are spending lavishly to keep the sector under perfusion. Especially the capital which, last year, invested 1.4 million euros to compensate for the closures linked to the pandemic and where, if the same team remains in power after the municipal elections in May, we will spend 20 million euros until 2024 for Las Ventas, the Madrid bullring.
If the battle is fierce around bullfighting, it is also because this tradition is fighting for its survival. Certainly, last year, the sector was able to organize 915 bullfighting shows – including 475 bullfights -, a good recovery after the 824 events of the previous year and after the virtual shutdown at the worst times of the Covid-19.
But, in the long term, Spanish bullfighting is not celebrating. In 2010, there were 2,422 bullfighting shows, more than three times the number today. Opinion polls show a growing disaffection, while the vocations of young bullfighters are not declining.
For now, the laws protect bullfights since, in 2013, the conservative People’s Party approved a law regulating “bullfighting art” and its status as an “intangible asset of Spanish culture”. In the eyes of anthropologist François Zumbiehl, there is confusion between the question of animal abuse and that of heritage: “There is a ritual, a beauty, the organization of the show, the involvement of the spectator. This is all culture! »
And it’s also politics: the formation that most strongly defends bullfighting, to the point of having professionals in its electoral lists, is Vox, the ultra-right. Among his 100 measures to “save Spain” is a bullfighting protection law.
