This factsheet was completed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)  . Please direct any questions or comments to PETA directly at 757-622-7382 or info@peta.org.

Bullfighting: A Tradition of Tragedy

At best, the term “bullfighting” is a misnomer, as there is usually little competition between a nimble sword-wielding matador (Spanish for “killer”)   and a confused, maimed, psychologically tormented, and physically debilitated bull. Supporters justify the act by calling it a tradition. Opponents maintain that no matter what its history, bullfighting is the torture, mutilation, and slaughter of animals for entertainment.

Commercialism
One of the biggest supporters of bullfighting is the tourist industry. Travel agents and bullfight promoters portray the fight as a festive and fair competition. What they do not reveal is that the bull never has a chance to defend himself, much less to survive.

The bulls are intentionally debilitated with sandbags dropped on their backs.(1)   One of Spain’s bullfighting critics, Joaquin Vidal of El Pais, wrote of drugged bulls at one bullfight, “There was nothing in the arena to fight. The bulls were mostly moribund.”(2)   A study conducted by scientists at Spain’s Salamanca University found that 20 percent of the bulls used for fighting are drugged before they step into the ring. In the sampling of 200 bulls, one in five had been given anti-inflammatory drugs, which mask injuries that could sap the animal’s strength.(3) 

One common practice is to “shave” the bulls’ horns by sawing off a few inches.(4)   Bulls’ horns, like cats’ whiskers, help the animals navigate, so a sudden change impairs their coordination. Shaving is illegal, so the horns are sometimes inspected by a veterinarian after a fight. But in 1997, the Confederation of Bullfighting Professionals, including Spain’s 230 matadors, went on strike in opposition to these veterinary inspections. The strikers claimed that veterinarians were “not qualified” to inspect the bulls.(5)   However, most recognize this as just another aspect of the corruption rampant in a business that pays up to $1 million to each professional matador and pulls in over $1 billion in ticket sales annually.(6) 

Systematic Mutilation
In a typical event, the bull enters the arena and is approached by picadores, men on blindfolded horses who drive lances into the bull’s back and neck muscles. This impairs the bull’s ability to lift his head. They twist and gouge the lances to ensure a significant amount of blood loss. Then come the banderilleros on foot who proceed to distract and dart around the bull while plunging banderillas—“brightly colored sticks with harpoon points” into his back.(7,8)   When the bull has weakened from blood loss, these banderilleros run the bull in more circles until he is dizzy and stops chasing. Finally, the matador appears and, after provoking a few exhausted charges from the dying animal, tries to kill the bull with his sword.(8)   If he misses, succeeding only in further mutilation, an executioner is called in to stab the exhausted and submissive animal to death. The dagger is supposed to cut the spinal cord, but even this can be blundered, leaving the bull fully conscious but paralyzed as he is chained by his horns and dragged from the arena.(9)  

“I can see how people see this as a barbaric thing” said a 19-year-old French matador star, Chamaco, but “[t]he killing of the bull is like the signature on a painting.” This same matador is famous for entertaining the audience. “He yells at the animal, gesturing wildly and triumphantly, teasing it, taunting it, begging it to dance with him,” describes one spectator.(10)   If the crowd is happy with the matador, the bull’s ears and tail are cut off and presented as a gift. A few minutes later, another bull enters the arena and the sadistic cycle starts again.

Other Victims
The bulls aren’t the only victims of the arena. The horses used in bullfights are blindfolded so that they don’t become frightened of the charging bull. They are often gored. At the Barcelona Olympics, The Philadelphia Daily News reported, “One time last night, the bull charged the horse, knocked off the rider, knocked over the horse and got his horn tangled up in all the padding. The frightened horse, still blindfolded, kicked furiously as it lay on its side. The bull pushed and pulled, shoved and yanked, unable to free itself from the horse’s padding.”(11) 

American author Ernest Hemingway, famous for romanticizing the bullfight ritual, once described the scenes of horses being gored: “I have seen these, call them disemboweling, that is the worst word when, due to their timing, they were very funny. This is the sort of thing you should not admit, but it is because such things have not been admitted that the bullfight has never been explained.”(12) 

Bull Breeding
Selective breeding has enabled ranchers to create a bull who will die in a manner most satisfying to the public. “[T]he pressure is on breeders to produce smaller animals with more stamina. … a bull that always charges in the same way and does not jerk its head wildly.”(13)   They are bred to return to the torture repeatedly.

Other Rituals of Abuse
Mexican bullfighting also includes “novillada,” or baby bullfights. The bulls that are used are all less than 3 years old.(14)  

The Portuguese (or so-called “bloodless”)   bullfights that are legal in many U.S. states involve people’s teasing and attacking the bull. Eight men, known as “grabbers,” line up in front of the bulls to grab the bulls’ horns, piling on top of the animals and tackling them until they fall to the ground.(15)   In Portuguese bullfights in many countries, the bulls are still stabbed with banderillas and have their horns shaved.(16,17)   Although tormenting and abuse is part of the show, killing must be done outside the arena.

In Colombia, there is an annual festival in which solitary bulls are tormented by thousands of people who think they are testing their “bravery” (aided by a festive atmosphere and large quantities of alcohol)  . “If nobody gets killed, it’s boring,” laments Carlos Perez, head of the committee that organized the contest in 1996. But even Colombian bullfighter Luis Cuadrado admits, “It’s just one bull against a thousand morons.” Cuadrado prefers to sit on the ground until the bull is close enough to stab with a lance, after which Cuadrado promptly scurries away to safety. These festivals last four or five days, with at least 35 victimized bulls each day.(18) 

Opposition
Pope St. Pius V decreed that bullfights are “altogether foreign to piety and charity.” He wished that “these cruel and disgraceful exhibitions of devils and not of men be abolished” and he forbade attendance at them under pain of excommunication.19 Even supporters cannot deny that the practice is barbaric. The Mexican author Eduardo del Rio, who glorified the maiming of bulls in his books, candidly described bullfighting as “a stumbling block for the humanization of man.”(20)   Lyn Sherwood, publisher of a pro-bullfighting magazine, proudly declared, “I have no moral problem promoting something I consider morally unjustifiable.”(21) 

Most forms of the practice are illegal in the United States because of its inherent cruelty. But tourists, especially from the U.S., keep bullfighting in business. Most tourists leave their first bullfight after only two of six bulls have been killed, but by paying for a ticket, the damage has already been done. According to a 2002 survey by InterGallup S.A., 69 percent of Spaniards show no interest in bullfights, up from 30 percent in the ’90s.(22)   At the same time, more young Hispanic people are protesting the crude ritual. In 1995, Madrid was besieged with 5,000 Spanish demonstrators calling for an end to the practice.(23) 

Many anti-bullfighting groups have sprung up worldwide, including the Spanish Alternativa para la Liberación Animal, the Mexican Peña Antitaurina Mexicana, and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Tijuana and Mexico City.
Spain’s Green Party has been working with the country’s Association for the Defense of Animal Rights (ADDA)   to have bullfighting banned. In 1993, a petition drive by the coalition garnered more than 1 million signatures.(24) 

What You Can Do
If you are planning to visit a country that permits bullfighting, please tell your travel agent that you are opposed to cruelty to animals in any form. Many tourist resorts are building bullfight arenas as part of their “recreation” facilities; refuse to stay at such a resort, and write a letter to the owner explaining why. Instead, visit the Spanish resort towns that have banned bullfighting: Tossa de Mar, Vilamacolum, and La Vajol. In Mexico, the city of Jalapa has also banned bullfighting.
Before you go on vacation abroad, write to the country’s ambassador and ask whether rituals involving animal slaughter are part of its tourist attractions. Make it clear that you want no part of such activities, and never be afraid to talk about bullfighting cruelties. Most people are unaware of the facts but agree that bullfighting should be stopped once they hear the whole story.

Please write to the Spanish and Mexican embassies and explain that as long as this cruel bloodsport continues, you will never visit their countries.

Embassy of Spain
2375 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.
Washington, DC 20037

Embassy of Mexico
1911 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, DC 20006

References

1)  Phil Davison, “Matadors on Horns of a Dilemma,” The Independent, 12 Feb. 1994.
2)  Ibid.
3)  Reuters, “One-Fifth of Spain’s Fighting Bulls Drugged?” 28 Nov. 2000.
4)  Al Goodman, “Machismo vs. Money: Whose Bull Is Gored? “ The New York Times, 9 Mar. 1997, p. E6.
5)  Ibid.
6)  Ibid.
7)  Bill Lyon, “A Slaughter That Is Really a Slaughter,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, 27 Jul. 1992, p. C1.
8)  Tony Hendra, “Man and Bull,” Harper’s Magazine, Nov. 1996, Vol. 293, No. 1758, p. 69.
9)  Lyon.
10)  Stephen Smith, “Horns of a Dilemma,” The New Statesman, 4 Jul. 1997.
11)  Sharon Waxman, “The Dance to the Death,” The Washington Post, 25 Jun. 1992, p. C5.
12)  Rich Hofmann, “Blood, Death, Gore, at About $20 a Pop,” The Philadelphia Daily News, 27 Jul. 1992, p. 84.
13)  Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon (New York: Scribner, 1932)  .
14)  “Fighting Bulls,” The Economist, 9 Oct. 1993, Vol. 329, No. 7832, p. 101.
15)  John McCormick, “In Defense of Poesie and Bullfighting,” American Scholar, Winter 1992, Vol. 61, No. 1, p. 109.
16)  “Bullfighting, American Style,” Fox News, 16 Aug. 2000.
17)  “Luzhov Puts a Stop to Planned Bullfights,” The Moscow Times, 28 Aug. 2001.
18)  “Bardot Gets Bullfight Called Off,” News Interactive, 28 Aug. 2001.
19)  Paul Haven, “Courageous or Bull-Headed?” The Plain Dealer, 28 Nov. 1996.
20)  Pope Pius V, Bullarum Romanorum Pontificum, Vol. 4, 2nd Part, 1567, pp. 402-4.
21)  Cole McFarland, “Death in the Afternoon,” The Animals’ Voice, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1988.
22)  Ibid.
23)  “Interest in Bullfighting Survey,” Intergallup, S.A., Jul. 2002.
24)  Hendra.
25)  Davison.