Controversy rages over bullfighting in Spain

Mar 4, 2010, 14:20 GMT

Madrid - Controversy was raging in Spain on Thursday over the viability of the country's bullfighting tradition.

The Madrid regional government announced it was planning to declare bullfights a part of the region's cultural heritage, while a parliamentary commission of the north-eastern region of Catalonia was debating a bullfighting ban.

Bullfights had a special cultural relevance for Spain, Madrid regional vice-premier Ignacio Gonzalez said, criticizing those who had described the spectacle as animal torture.

An environmental commission of the Catalan regional parliament was meanwhile debating a bullfighting ban which won preliminary approval from the regional parliament in late 2009.

Among the experts participating in the debate, French philosopher Francis Wolf described bullfights as part of the universal heritage, as a spectacle of 'singular beauty and unique emotion,' the end of which would lead to the extinction of the race of the fighting bull.

A bullfight was 'sentiment, passion of life and death, respect and giving,' bullfighter Joselito said when the commission began its debate on Wednesday.

Bullfighting opponents stressed the suffering of bulls, who have long darts pushed into their bodies and are killed with a sword during the spectacle.

Bullfights could not be defended in the name of tradition, because traditions could be unacceptable, philosopher Jesus Mosterin said, mentioning the examples of female circumcision and violence against women.

His comments were rejected by politicians from both Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialist Party and the opposition conservative People's Party (PP), who accused Mosterin of trivializing domestic violence.

The Catalan parliament was not expected to take a definitive decision on the bullfighting ban for several months.

If Catalonia outlaws bullfights, it would become the first Spanish region to do so after the Canary Islands, which banned them in 1991.