Coughing Blood: The bullfight

AnimaNaturalis is not popular. Animal rightists, it offends traditional animal abusers, other animal-rights groups and a fair chunk of what you might think would comprise its natural support, the youth. Its modus operandi of strident agitprop and public protest, be it against the correbou, the circus or the bullfight has failed to garner significant popular support.

Last year AnimaNaturalis staged a protest in advance of the bull-run correbou in the village of Fornalutx. It was most revealing that to the fore among those hurling insults in its direction were the young.

A curious and ill-formed philosophy, if one can use such a word, exists among Mallorcan youth, especially that in more rural areas. Catalanist, Luddite in a hankering for a return to the values of the land and in rejecting mass tourism, politically right-on in being eco-conscious, it is also largely politically incorrect in respect of animal welfare.

Whereas this youth philosophy coincides, to differing degrees, with the values of certain political parties and campaigning groups like the eco-warriors of GOB, it diverges on the matter of animals and animal tradition. It is cultural fundamentalism.

AnimaNaturalis is not popular because it poses difficult questions. In attacking traditions to do with animals, it also attacks an insularity of Mallorcan society by confronting it with issues that this society is ill-equipped to deal with; ill-equipped because a not untypical Mallorcan response to individual or collective attack is to adopt a haughty and petulant righteousness. Mallorcans are argumentative, but they are not great at argument or with dealing with confrontation.

The unpopularity of AnimaNaturalis extends to other animal rights groups who prefer, they say, greater diplomacy. A reason for these other groups distancing themselves from AnimaNaturalis in Fornalutx was that they believed their approach would have brought about greater concessions from the village mayor in amending the correbou. Instead, the mayor, though he did make some changes, was pushed into a corner in siding with those who lobbed the insults at AnimaNaturalis. Or so it was claimed.

There is another way of looking at this. AnimaNaturalis is not passive. As much as fierce defence, passivity is what symbolises attitudes towards animal rights and most obviously the bullfight. It was once explained to me that there would be greater public displays of protest against the bullfight were it not for the fact that people do not wish to be seen or cannot afford to be seen to be protesting. This is cultural fundamentalism of a different order; it is one with echoes of a style of Mallorcan feudalism, the passing of which was only relatively recent and which thus remains within society's consciousness as well as within some of its current-day mores.

Though opinion polling has shown that the popularity of the bullfight has declined in Spain as a whole, the lobby for its continuance is strong, as is the social dynamic which appears to neuter protest. In an uppity and liberal part of Spain such as Catalonia, the dynamic operates in reverse, so much so that legislation was driven by popular petition to ban the bullfight. Yet a Catalanist sympathy among some of Mallorca's youth does not extend to what has been nuanced as the real reason for Catalonia's bullfight ban - anti-Spanishness.

In Mallorca the numbers that have gathered to protest at the annual bullfights in Alcúdia, Muro and Inca have been small to the point of irrelevance. In Inca AnimaNaturalis couldn't have anticipated what might actually prove to be a turning-point in both its fortunes and the whole bullfight debate in Mallorca.

One of the bulls was on the rampage. No matador was to be seen. The bull was unscathed, it was being taunted from the safety of the wooden barrier and the terraces. Until, that is, the promoter of the event took it upon himself to act as matador, thus, so it is claimed, breaking a regulation that only those listed, i.e. the matadors, can participate.

There is a video on You Tube which has gone not exactly viral but which shows what happened. I have been to the bullfight and I have witnessed similar scenes, but I had a sharp intake of breath when I saw the bull cough blood and stumble having been struck with the sword by the promoter-matador. I am neither for nor against the bullfight, for the reason that it is not my argument, but this was sickening, and the power of the video might be to persuade those whose passivity has been the norm and those of a culturally fundamental bent to recognise that perhaps AnimaNaturalis has a point.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.