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.
