Bullfighting is under attack 6/6/24, 12:00 PM

advertisement

Menu Weekly edition The world in brief Search My Economist

Culture | Bad sport?

Bullfighting is under attack

It reveals a lot about politics and attitudes towards Spain

https://www.economist.com/culture/2024/05/29/bullfighting-is-under-attack Page 1 of 6
Bullfighting is under attack 6/6/24, 12:00 PM

She’s got beef with it photograph: getty images

May 29th 2024 | madrid and mexico city Share

Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android.

00:00 00:00

B ocinero, half a tonne and dull black, impressed the crowd more than the
two bulls who had come and died before him. He hooked his left horn under
the right leg of Tomás Rufo, the matador, who landed nearby. The bull pressed his
advantage, rolling Mr Rufo several times before other toreros jumped in to distract
him. Mr Rufo was soon up limping, shaking o! his pain, and before long Bocinero
fell under his sword. He died within a minute. (To your correspondent it felt like a
very long minute.)

Bullfighting, defying many predictions, still lives. Bocinero was killed in a sold-out
stadium at Madrid’s annual San Isidro festival, which honours the city’s patron
saint. Every year on May 16th Spanish bullrings observe a moment of silence for
Joselito, one of the greatest matadors of all time, killed in the ring in 1920. Danger
hangs over the spectacle at all times. A statue of Alexander Fleming, who
discovered penicillin in 1928, stands outside Madrid’s bullring, as thanks from all
the fighters who survived severe injuries due to modern medicine.

advertisement

The ritual of bullfighting has changed little since Joselito’s demise. That
familiarity and tradition are part of the spectacle’s appeal: passes with the cape to
test and tire, spear-jabs from mounted picadores, the placement of barbed shafts in
the bull’s upper back by banderilleros and then the matador’s passes with the red
muleta cape before the killing blow.

Bullfighting is practised in eight countries. It is not just popular in Spain but in

https://www.economist.com/culture/2024/05/29/bullfighting-is-under-attack Page 2 of 6
Bullfighting is under attack 6/6/24, 12:00 PM

Bullfighting is practised in eight countries. It is not just popular in Spain but in

parts of Latin America, too. Mexico City has the biggest bullring in the world. But
those intent on fighting bullfighting are becoming more emboldened.

On May 28th Colombia approved a national ban on bullfighting; it will soon be

signed into law by Colombia’s leftist president, Gustavo Petro. This year Mexico
City’s season went ahead only after a judicial decision banning it was overturned.
Protesters stopped tra"c with signs reading, “It’s not art. It’s torture.” Five of
Mexico’s 32 states have outlawed it. In May Ernest Urtasun of Sumar, Spain’s far-
left party and a junior partner in the government, announced the cancellation of
the national bullfighting prize. “People understand less and less that animal
torture is practised, and that prizes are given for it,” he said.

In other words bullfighting has left the sporting arena and entered a political one.
In Spain voters on the left increasingly want bullfighting banned, while those on
the right want it not only to stay legal but to be subsidised by the state. It is not
quite, “Tell me what you think about the bulls, and I’ll tell you what you think
about Palestine,” says David Mejía, a columnist for the conservative Spanish
newspaper El Mundo who is critical of the Socialist government but is also against
bullfighting. Yet tastes have changed from a decade ago, when it was considered a
more acceptable tradition.

advertisement

Remaining left-wing supporters today are older and rural. El País, Spain’s centre-
left newspaper, does not cover boxing, considering it both brutal and sordid, but
in deference to remaining left-leaning aficionados, it does cover los toros.
Bullfighting belongs to the pueblo, the broad masses, says Vicente Zabala de la
Serna, who writes about bullfighting for El Mundo, and thinks it is a shame for the
left to criticise it. Writers like Mr Zabala are printed in the culture section of their
newspapers, not in sport.

Criticism is not just modern and left-wing. A papal decree forbade bullfighting in
1567 and has never been repealed. Ernest Hemingway, an American writer, called
the sport “decadent” in “Death in the Afternoon” (1932), though he loved it still,
big-game hunter that he was. In 2010 the Catalan government, spurred by regional
nationalists, imposed a ban (later reversed by the constitutional court, but
bullfights have not returned). In 2022 Spain’s Socialist-led government said that a
“culture voucher” for young people to spend on activities after the pandemic
https://www.economist.com/culture/2024/05/29/bullfighting-is-under-attack Page 3 of 6
Bullfighting is under attack 6/6/24, 12:00 PM

“culture voucher” for young people to spend on activities after the pandemic
could not apply to bullfights. (A court disagreed and allowed it to apply to fights.)

In Mexico criticism depends less on left versus right but instead divides parts of
the population with closer links to Spain from the rest. Eleven states in the centre
of the country have named bullfighting a cultural patrimony. Ramiro Alatorre,
president of the National Association for the Breeding of Fighting Bulls, says that
protesters are limited to the capital and are “outsiders to our culture and roots”.

The sport has already defied many predictions of disappearance, but it is in

decline. In Spain the number of full-fledged bullfights has fallen by about a third
since 2010. Mr Zabala says that he was not sure bullfighting could survive the
pandemic. But after low attendance in 2019 and during covid, it has come back.
That may well be due to a defiant reaction by fans in response to what they
perceive as nannying. Supporters, as well as activist opponents, can be rather bull-
headed. ■

For more on the latest books, films, tv shows, albums and controversies, sign up to Plot
Twist, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter

Explore more Mexico Spain

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Bad sport?”

Culture
June 1st 2024

→ Remembering D-Day, as a new war rages in Europe

→ Bullfighting is under attack

→ Is time more on America’s or China’s side?

→ There is more to breasts than meets the eye

→ A century after his death Franz Kafka is still in the zeitgeist

https://www.economist.com/culture/2024/05/29/bullfighting-is-under-attack Page 4 of 6