The New York Times recently published an article about the potential passage of a referendum in the Catalan Parliament against bullfighting. Economic woes, combined with dwindling interest among young Catalans, has led to closures of bullrings all across Spain. Political issue? Animal rights issue? Cultural issue What do you think?
http://bit.ly/v9Qgt
I think it’s very sad. I have been to the corrida and the “factory farm” alike, and I believe arguments of the former’s cruelty fall flat unless also leveled tenfold at the latter. I saw El Juli and others take six bulls in Barcelona ten years ago, one of them clipping the matador so badly that he limped out for his final bull with a pair of skintight jeans holding his injured leg together. It was a terrible, beautiful spectacle that distilled for me a fundamentally Spanish view of mortality. Death in the afternoon, to quote Hemingway.