BARCELONA, Spain — Lawmakers in Catalonia outlawed bullfighting Wednesday, making it Spain’s first major region to ban the centuries-old ballet between matador and beast after heated debate that pitted animal-welfare groups against a pillar of traditional culture.
Cheers broke out in the local 135-seat legislature after the speaker announced that the ban had passed 68-55 with nine abstentions. The ban will take effect in 2012 in the northeastern coastal region whose capital is Barcelona.
The practical effect of the ban will be limited. Catalonia has only one functioning bullring, in Barcelona, while another disused one is being turned into a shopping mall. It stages 15 fights a year, which are rarely sold out, out of a nationwide total of roughly 1,000 bouts per season.
Still, bullfighting buffs and Spanish conservatives have taken the drama seriously, seeing a stinging anti-Spanish rebuke in the grass-roots, anti bullfighting drive that started in the region last year.
But Joan Puigcercos, a lawmaker from a Catalan proindependence party, insisted that this was not about politics or national identity but rather “the suffering of the animal. That is the question, nothing more.”
He said that even though attendance at bullfights is on the decline in Spain, it would be morally wrong to sit back and just let the Spanish national pastime die a natural death.
However, the Catalan regional president, Jose Montilla, said Catalonia should have done just that - let social customs evolve to the point where bullfighting would vanish on its own, rather than legislate an end to it and deny people’s right to choose whether to go to the ring.
“I voted against the ban because I believe in freedom,” Montilla said.
The result was expected to energize animal-welfare groups bent on seeking bans in other regions of Spain.
“The suffering of animals in the Catalan bullrings has been abolished once and for all. It has created a preceden we hope will be replicated by other democratic parliaments internationally, in those regions and countries where such cruel bullfights are still allowed,” said Leonardo Anselmi of PROU, the animal welfare groups whose signature-collecting campaign late last year forced Catalonia’s Parliament to debate and vote.
Bullfighting is also popular in Mexico, parts of South America, southern France and Portugal.
The center-right Popular Party, which is fervent about the idea of Spain as a unified country run from Madrid - and also supports bullfighting - said it will fight back against the ban.
It will press both chambers of the Spanish Parliament to pass a law giving bullfighting a protected status that will bar regions from outlawing it, said Alicia Sanchez-Camacho, president of the party’s Catalan branch.
In the Madrid region, animal-welfare activists recently presented more than 50,000 signatures as part of a petition to force a similar debate and vote. However, there they face a tougher battle because the Madrid regional parliament is controlled by conservatives who have declared Spain’s “fiesta nacional” to be part of Madrid’s cultural heritage.
The first Spanish region to outlaw bullfighting was the Canary Islands in 1991.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 07/29/2010