Promoting Bullfighting..?

The Spanish government is currently considering passing a law which would protect and promote bullfighting, an outdated spectacle which causes extreme suffering and a slow and tortuous death for the bulls used.
The majority of Spanish citizens don't support bullfighting. Nor do they want their taxes spent protecting it.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you enjoy watching bull fighting yourself? Do you support it or you absolutely despise the idea?

Every opinion is welcome, especially the ones of Tauros & Bouffalant, if you guys are reading this.

Dogfighting happens regardless of whether it is legal or illegal. I don't know how I feel about this, but perhaps by legalizing it, they can at least regulate it to make it less akin to torture and more akin to the kind of fighting dogs and wolves do naturally amongst themselves.

No. No kind of animal cruelty should be promoted or encouraged. Its cruelty to animals plain and simple, I think that's wrong.

twocows said:

Dogfighting happens regardless of whether it is legal or illegal. I don't know how I feel about this, but perhaps by legalizing it, they can at least regulate it to make it less akin to torture and more akin to the kind of fighting dogs and wolves do naturally amongst themselves.

Click to expand...

No, it's not dogs, this is what was meant:




It's pretty sad, cowardly and unfair, really, when they stick those blood-sucking stick artifacts on the bull's backs, just so they can get slow and bleed to death.

Talk about unessesary and cruel. :\

Does this still bring in tourism dollars? Really?

I'd think they just want to let it fade away

The conservative media sees bullfighting as a tradition that "reflects the spirit of Spain" and thus banning it would be akin to banning bagguettes in France, pizza in Italy or rain in the UK. In fact, one of the worst conservative media around here (think anything from Rupert Murdoch) has a bull as a logo. It got worse when the State of Catalonia did ban bullfighting within their borders as a form of "animal torture", which spurred even moderate conservative media to headline "Animals win" next to a picture of the Governor and the leaders of the two other parties who supported the law- subtlety.

So when the conservatives won the 2011 election, the pro-bullfighting loby (mostly bullfighters and bull stock breeders) pushed for a federal law promoting and protecting it in the hopes that it would override the Catalan law- and that's where we are.

But bullfighting is not popular anymore- the number of events has been cut in half in the last 5 years (2000 to 1000), the assistence is barely 3,000 people per event (contrast: 30,000 average for football) and, in general, they depend on Government funds to survive. That's why they hope that making it a "protetcted cultural event" will help promote it- otherwise it will continue fading away until it's rightly gone.

Normally I would support this "cultural protection" because kosher and halal are pretty scary too. But since it's dying anyways and it needs government help to survive, it can go on its way.