Catalonia Bans Bullfighting!

July 2010 08.51 BST Catalonia has only one bullring, but the decision to ban bullfighting will be regarded as symbolic, and Spanish conservatives have taken the vote seriously. Photograph: Jan Sochor / Alamy/Alamy
The Catalonia parliament in Barcelona has voted to ban bullfighting, a move that rejects a hallmark of traditional Spain in a region with its own language and culture.

The ban approved in the local legislature vote means the wealthy north-east coastal region becomes the first in mainland Spain to outlaw the deadly ballet of sword-wielding matador and charging half-tonne beast.

The practical effect of such a move is likely to be limited: Catalonia has only one functioning bullring, in Barcelona – another disused one is being turned into a shopping mall – and it stages 15 fights a year which are rarely sold out. Nationwide, there are approximately 1,000 a season.

Still, bullfighting buffs and Spanish conservatives are taking the drama very seriously. They see a stinging anti-Spanish rebuke in a grassroots, anti-bullfighting drive that started last year and culminated in the vote in the 135-seat Catalan parliament.

The final result was 68 in favour of prohibition and 55 against. The first Spanish region to outlaw bullfighting was the Canary Islands, in 1991. But fights were never that popular there and when the ban took effect there had not been one for seven years. So Catalonia's is a much more potent case, even if bullfighting is not as popular there as it is in Madrid or Andalusia in the south.

Along with the Basque region, Catalonia has the most self-rule among Spain's semi-autonomous regions, running its own police force and having a say over a wide range of other issues. But many Catalans are angry because Spain's highest court recently trimmed the region's self-rule charter.

Josep Rull, a spokesman for the centre-right Catalan nationalist coalition called Convergence and Union, denied that the drive to do away with bullfighting is anti-Spanish, insisting it is simply a case of a society whose values have evolved. He likened the change to Britain's decision to outlaw fox hunting with hounds in 2004.

"Was that an exercise in rejecting English, British and Scottish roots? No," Rull said from Barcelona.

Bullfighting may have been popular in Catalonia decades ago – Barcelona once boasted three bullrings – but tastes have changed, and for most Catalans today, Rull said, "the suffering and death of a living being cannot be turned into a public spectacle".