BULLFIGHTING IS FINALLY OVER


Bullfighting has been a tradition in Spain for over 600 years. It was recently banned in Catalonia, and there has been a lot of controversy about the decision. Some people think that banning bullfighting is a way of showing their independence from Madrid, depriving Spain of its tradition, and other people, mostly animal rights activists, think that bullfighting is a terrible way of enjoying yourself.

In my opinion, the decision to ban bullfighting was right. First of all, harming an animal to the point of death for fun is probably one of the worst if not the worst traditions in Spain. An animal shouldn’t suffer so that some people have a good time. I know that the tradition has been in force in Spain for a long time, but in a society where there has to be justice and liberty, bullfighting shouldn’t be allowed.

Secondly, even though Catalonia is a region in Spain and it actually isn’t a country, we should have our own traditions and we should be able to ban bullfighting which is also hurtful and uncivilized.  

The way I see it is that it's an awful way to enjoy yourself and it's not fair either. For instance, when the bull enters the bullring, the bullfighter immediatly weakens it's neck muscles so that the gore isn't as strong as it could be. That, from my point of view, is pathetic, because they automatically make the fight unfair.

In 1991 the Canary Islands banned bullfighting and there wasn’t such an impact, but the fact that Catalonia has banned it recently, given all its history with Spain and the fact that it’s always wanted its independence, leads Spanish citizens to think that it has something to do with Catalonia wanting to become different from the rest of Spain.

I do think that banning bullfighting has a bit to do with Catalan nationalism, because we can we different from the rest of Spain, we should be able to make some of the decisions which involve Catalonia, rather than just accepting that all the decisions have to be made for us.

On the subject of banning the “correbous”, I think that in the end they’ll have to disappear as well. But there’s a big difference between bullfighting and “correbous”. In bullfighting the bull dies in the end, and in the “correbous” it doesn’t. Nonetheless, the bull suffers in both of them, so if the Catalan Government has banned bullfights for not fulfilling the animal rights rules, they should also ban the “correbous”.

Here's a link where you can watch the last bullfight in "La Monumental", and you can see what they do to these poor animals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm8Ptsy-phY

My Summer Holidays

Last summer was one of the best I've ever had. It started on my birthday, June 28th. My friends and I went out all day and out for dinner, and after that we went out to a party in a town nearby.

During July I didn't do pretty much anything. I went to the gym every day and in the afternoon I went out with friends to the cinema, the swimming pool or out for a quick stroll around the shops. We also went once to the local discotheque and once to a small town festival, and we went shopping in Barcelona twice. At the beginning of August, I went with five friends for a few days to l'Escala, a small touristy town on the Costa Brava. We spent most mornings on the beach, while in the afternoons we did several activities like hiring a paddle boat, which is this water slide attached to a small boat powered by pedals. We had trouble moving because we weren't strong enough, but we did get the hang of it at the end. On the 5th of August I went on holiday to Paris with my parents and my little sister. We stayed there for a week and visited several places like Versailles, the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower. When we came back from Paris we spent a week at home and then, on the 17th, we went to the UK to see my family. I really like going to Oxford because it’s so different to here.



First of all it’s not hot, it’s quite mild in the summer and I really like going shopping there and getting all my clothes, CDs and DVDs. Whilst we were in the UK we went down to London twice. The first day we went shopping and to the Hard Rock Cafe, a very famous restaurant which has different objects belonging to rock artists from around the world.  We went there with one of my dad’s best friends and her two children. On the second day we were down in London we went to Madame Tussauds, the wax museum. We came back to Vic on the 24th of August and I spent the last few days of summer going out with friends. The last highlight of my summer vacations was on the 6th of September. My friends and I went to Nuria, this little valley in the Pyrenees. We walked up to Nuria, had lunch there and then came back down on this cog railway called “cremallera”.
As you can see I had a wonderful time and I have very good memories of this summer.