Mar Gómez commented on one of our articles (via facebook) about the 7-year-old-girl who was gored by a bull as she played outside her front door:
“Having fun at the expense of a stressed animal says a lot about the low educational level of many Spaniards. The only way to see this disappear is by not giving money to this kind of activities. So far, only the councils of Podemos-UI have spent the money on other things, like books for public libraries, concerts and varied cultural activities…. In Cercedilla, Madrid, the plaza de toros was re-named Plaza de Todos to hold lots of cultural events during local fiestas.”
We cannot agree more.
It is completely ridiculous that you cannot smoke in a bar because you might influence somebody’s health negatively, yet a town hall can authorize – using public funds – an animal, capable of killing a person in seconds, to run through the streets.
Why are we hounded by the State to preserve our health and not put in peril that of others while a completely obsolete mindset insists that tormenting bulls is a manifestation of cultural purity.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not against bullfighting – this is Spain and it is the prerogative of the Spanish to permit or not this practice; not mine, but what I would like, just a little of, is consistency, coherence and credibility.
Get off our backs about taking substances that imperil our individual health or having to wear a crash helmet on a motorbike, or if not, ban bull running through public streets, and above all, stop using public funds to finance it.
The Catalans banned bull fighting in Cataluña (because it ‘smacks’ of Spain) yet authorises and revels in tying burning material to the horns of bulls and then baiting them. Where is the consistency there?
The present conservative government completely ignored a popular petition backed by 1.6m signatures to impose the cancellation of a mortgage by handing over the keys – no house; not debt. Yet, when they received a popular petition backed by just 600,000 signatures to make bullfighting into a Spanish Heritage Event, thus receiving public funding, they rushed to approve it with their absolute parliamentary majority of the time, meaning that public administrations can earmark public funds to finance such fiestas – where are the priorities?
As for the town where the child was gored outside her own front door, the Town Hall has decided to let the fiestas continue the very next day after ostentatiously reinforcing the barriers. Does a bull have to burst into somebody’s sitting room before somebody thinks, “Hang on a moment!” Couldn’t the Town Hall at least have the minimum decency to cancel the rest of this year’s fiesta… seeing as the girl remains in the ICU in a critical state?
(News/Editorial: bullfighting financed by public funds)