Spain’s Supreme Court has upheld a final ban on the torture of bulls during the cruel “Toro de la Vega” festival, following years of pressure from local Spanish groups, including PACMA, and PETA.
No young bull will ever again be stabbed to death by men with spears in the Castilla y León region of Spain.
Spain’s Supreme Court has upheld a ban on the torture of bulls for the brutal Toro de la Vega festival in what has been hailed a victory for Spanish and international groups such as PACMA, CAS International and Humane Society International/Europe (HSI) who have worked together for years to achieve an end to this cruel spectacle.
The Toro de la Vega fiesta takes place in Tordesillas, in the Castilla y León region of Spain, each September, despite the fact almost three quarters (74 per cent) of Spanish citizens aged 16 to 65 oppose the bull fiesta.
During the barbaric event, spear-wielding men on horseback chase a bull out of the town and into the surrounding countryside. He is relentlessly pursued and stabbed with spears until he is cornered before being brutally stabbed to death.
Since 2016, the Toro de la Vega has involved a normal bull-run through the town, during which the animal is not killed in public.
In its appeal, the Tordesillas local council had argued that the legislation eliminated “the essence of the popular rite that gave rise to bullfighting.”(!!!) Another of the arguments stated that “40,000 fans” attended the event “compared to 100 animal activists.” (!!!) The council also argued that the death of the animal did not detract from its dignity, but rather enhanced it. The appeal claimed that there was no real justification to do away with the death of the bull.
Silvia Barquero, president of Spain’s animal-rights party PACMA, has spent years fighting for the prohibition of the torture and death of the bull in the Toro de la Vega festival. She has welcomed the definitive abolition of a practice that her group believes “is not in accordance with the sensitivities of today’s society.” According to Barquero, the ruling is the first victory in the fight to end similar festivals related to bullfighting. Now, she explained, the “Toro de la Vega has become just another bull-run, one that we reject just like we do all the others.”
After receiving news of the ruling, the mayor of Tordesillas announced that the Town Hall had requested that its external legal services examine what “possibilities present themselves now.” This report will made available to the council that is formed after the upcoming municipal elections on May 26, says González Poncela, who will not be running again as mayor.
Speaking about the landmark decision, Dr Jo Swabe, Senior Director of Public Affairs for HSI said in a statement sent to Vegan Food & Living: “This is an important victory in the fight against the torture and killing of sentient animals for public entertainment. The Spanish Supreme Court has recognised that the mediaeval ‘tradition’ of allowing a terrified bull to be chased to exhaustion and then stabbed to death by a spear-wielding mob has no place in modern society.
We salute our Spanish colleagues who have fought against the backward attempts of Tordesillas Council to reverse an earlier decision to prohibit the public killing of the bull during the annual Toro de la Vega fiesta.”
This victory is part of a wider movement in Spain, as more and more people are speaking out against events in which bulls are tortured in the name of entertainment. To date, over 100 towns have banned bullfighting.
My comment: This bloodthirsty bull spectacle was recognized as a tourist attraction in 1980 and classified by the Government of Castile in 1999 as a traditional bullfight.
It is sadism, stupidity and ignorance of a people towards a sentient being, who is tortured not only from local tradition, but is presented as a tourist worthy attraction, culture of prehistoric man, for years the shame of Spain, that is Tordesillas, to which one recalls as a place where every year a legal lynching took place and therefore was called tradition!
Even these bloody bullfests are subsidized by the EU, alone 150 million euros flow directly and indirectly from Germany into the bullfighting industry, 600 million euros is the bloodthirsty Tauromafia, which plunges the European Union every year in the cash. This EU subsidy insanity feeds and preserves the bull mafia.
My best regards, Venus
World Animals Voice 