From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

BELFAST–A 17-month undercover
investigation of dogfighting by BBC Northern
Ireland’s Spotlight program, aired on August
30, caught County Tyrone Gaelic football star
Gerald Cavlan, 31, boasting in front of a
hidden camera about a dogfighting club he
cofounded called Bulldog Sanctuary Kennels.
Cavlan’s alleged use of the “sanctuary”
ruse appeared to be a first in the British Isles,
but U.S. dogfighters have often been caught in
recent years operating behind false front
“sanctuaries” and “rescues.” Some have
collected pit bull terriers and “bait” dogs and
cats from unwitting members of the public.
“The BBC program deployed an undercover
specialist from England who duped organizers of
two dog-fighting clubs in Northern Ireland and
two breeders of American pit bulls in Finland who
supplied dogs to Cavlan and other Northern
Ireland-based dog fighters,” reported Shawn
Pogatchnik of Associated Press. “All were filmed
discussing the tricks of their trade and methods
of evading detection.”
The two BBC crew confronted Finland-based
breeders Robert Gonzales and Paul Dunkel with
evidence of their activities before police
arrested them.

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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.”

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