News that the city might soon be bullfight-free is welcome to the various organisations advocating animal rights, such as the Asociación Defensa Derechos Animal (ADDA), Altarriba, and the Anti-Bullfighting Party against Animal Maltreatment (PACMA), amongst others, which have long fought for a ban on bullfights. However, there is still work to be done. “We want a parliamentary and legislative solution [to this issue],” said Francina Ballester of ADDA. “We will continue campaigning.”
British-born Deborah Parris is a member of PACMA, and stood for the party in the last Generalitat elections. She agreed with Ballester. “We won't be satisfied until bullfighting is abolished. In any case, there’s still the bullring at Tarragona.”
Bullfighting has been on the wane in Barcelona for some time. Declaring itself an anti-bullfighting city in 2004 was a gesture by the Ajuntament with popular support, but without legal backing. The Generalitat, without imposing an outright ban on the activity (as has happened in the Canary Islands), has taken steps to lessen its appeal. For many years, children under 14 have not been allowed to watch corrides and the construction of new bullrings was banned. However, bullfighting has continued. And, the organisation Plataforma de la Defensa de la Fiesta was set up in response to the declaration of Barcelona’s anti-bullfighting status, and has recently vowed to continue despite the serious blow that would be dealt to its cause if bullfighting ended at Monumental.
At the same time, Plataforma criticised what it sees as the use of bullfighting by Catalan nationalists in a campaign against Spain. Deborah Parris is indignant at such suggestions. “The anti-Catalan lobby repeatedly says that the abolition movement is anti-Spanish, but I can honestly say that in all our activism we have never had any support of this sort.”
Whatever its motives, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) last summer won support in Parliament to debate an amendment of the Animal Protection Law to erase the exception for bullfighting written into the article forbidding the public killing of animals. The debate is yet to take place but, if successful, the change would be a large nail in bullfighting’s coffin in Catalunya.
Whether politics or economics brings bullfighting to an end at Monumental, the building’s fate will have to be determined—at the very least the protected façade needs to be maintained. Les Arenes in Plaça Espanya closed in 1977, then stood empty and in an increasing state of ruin for over 20 years, until its conversion project began. However, Barcelona’s council may already have found a use for Monumental. The news that the coso might be holding its final bullfights was followed by declarations from second deputy mayor, Jordi Portabella of ERC, that the site would be an ideal location for the Bellcaire flea market. More commonly known as Els Encants Vells, it is currently in Plaça de les Glòries, but needs to find a new home because of major renovation works to be done there. The Glòries project is forecast to take up to 10 years, and will see the concrete ring now standing in the plaça replaced by a 12-hectare park, Design Museum and 1,200 new homes, amongst other things. However, there is no space put aside for the market.
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