Columbia Vs. Spain: Bullfighting Debate

COLOMBIA has taken a historical measurement towards ending bullfighting, reigniting nan statement successful Spain arsenic views towards animal use and taste practice evolve.

A taste contented meets its end

In May 2024, Colombia’s Congress passed nan No Más Olé law, banning bullfighting, rejoneo (bullfighting whilst riding a horse) and different related spectacles nationwide. The authorities allows a three-year modulation period, giving those employed successful nan bullfighting manufacture clip to accommodate earlier nan prohibition takes afloat effect successful 2027. The prohibition besides necessitates a broad scheme to support those affected, including replacement employment opportunities and nan repurposing of bullfighting arenas for cultural, recreational, sports, and creator uses.

President Gustavo Petro welcomed nan reform, stating erstwhile endorsing nan measure into rule that: “justice cannot show nan world that sidesplitting sentient beings for nosy is culture.”

Lawmaker Juan Carlos Losada said nan determination signalled a taste shift, ensuring that: “future generations will turn up successful a state wherever productivity replaces cruelty.”

Spain’s enduring narration pinch nan corrida (bullfight)

Spain remains 1 of nan fewer countries wherever bullfighting continues to beryllium protected by rule arsenic portion of its taste heritage. In 2016, nan Constitutional Court overturned Catalonia’s effort to prohibit nan practice, arguing that nan spectacle forms portion of Spain’s nationalist identity.

Public sentiment tells a different story. A caller Fundación BBVA study recovered that 77 per cent of Spaniards cull bullfighting, whilst nan government’s Culture Minister, Ernest Urtasun, noted that “a increasing mostly of Spaniards are concerned astir animal welfare.” 

Several municipalities person already withdrawn backing for bullfighting festivals, backed by dwindling attendance and nationalist discomfort.

Heritage versus humanity

Supporters of bullfighting reason that it sustains agrarian economies, preserves a historical creation shape and provides employment crossed breeding, tourism and performance. There is, however, interest that nan promises made to support those affected by a imaginable prohibition whitethorn not beryllium capable to safeguard livelihoods that dangle connected nan trade.

Colombian bull-rancher Sáez de Santamaría told US broadcaster WLRN that: “Bulls will now extremity up successful a slaughterhouse. Bullfights are an ancient ritual pinch belief origins, and it’s sad these animals will now person to dice unseen.” 

Detractors antagonistic that civilization should germinate alongside ethical awareness, and that nan suffering of animals for intermezo tin nary longer beryllium justified.

Colombia’s measured attack offers a applicable illustration of betterment — combining taste sensitivity pinch decisive policy. Its rule includes acquisition and employment programmes to thief workers modulation into caller roles, ensuring that contented gives measurement to translator alternatively than disappearance.

A shifting civilized frontier

Spain now faces a taste fork successful nan road. The mobility is nary longer whether bullfighting represents creation aliases cruelty, but whether nan nation’s consciousness of practice tin coexist pinch compassion. As Colombia has shown, ending nan bullfight is not astir erasing history — it is astir redefining what a humane and modern nine stands for.