Spain turns against bullfighting
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:
MADRID–“Pursued across open countryside,
jabbed at with spears and finally fatally stabbed
by a man wielding a lance, a bull called
Enrejado suffered a long, frightening and
sadistic death in front of an eager crowd at
Tordesillas, Castilla y León, northern Spain,”
recounted Guardian correspondent Gilles Tremlett
from Madrid on September 13, 2007, but unlike
British correspondents of a generation ago, his
subject was not perceived Spanish indifference
toward animal suffering.
Rather, it was Spanish outrage against
such events, which are increasingly viewed as
rural anachronisms.
“Pictures of the wounded, blood-drenched animal
being stabbed with the lance were published on
the front page of El País, Spain’s
biggest-selling daily newspaper, as it denounced
the survival of this primitive, medieval
spectacle,” Tremlett wrote.
“The regional government of Castilla y
León, run by the conservative People’s party,
has formally declared the festival to be ‘of
interest to tourists.’ Local people, however,
shooed photographers and journalists away so they
could not witness or capture the final moment of
death.”