The Bull That Has Had Its Day

There has been a good deal of discussion in Andratx about bulls. One in particular. The Osborne bull. Last year the town hall came up with the bright idea to mark the twinning between Andratx and Elche de la Sierra in the province of Albacete in Castile-La Mancha by placing an image identical to the Osborne bull on a plinth which draws attention to this twinning arrangement. It seemed a pretty odd thing to do. Elche, or so it appeared to me, had little to do with the bull. (Perhaps someone knows otherwise.) Nevertheless, the bull it was until a few months later when it was removed. It has now been decided that it will not be returning to the plinth. In fact, it is a decision guided by the fact that the town hall didn't have permission to use the image; it was a breach of copyright.

While the bull affair down Andratx way has been one of the legality or otherwise of using the image, there is a far broader debate as to the use of the image of the Osborne bull and indeed the image of the bull (any old bull) full stop. The Osborne bull has over the years acquired a status as the unofficial national emblem of Spain; it has been a case of brandy branding the country.

Once upon a time, this branding was seen as an advantage. Back in the day, had the man on the Clapham omnibus been asked to name one image that represented Spain more than any other, the answer would have been the bull, or more accurately the bullfight. Those were the days, remember, when the man on the Clapham omnibus's kids would have listened to Uncle Mac play Tommy Steele's "Little White Bull". The matador, the red cape, the snorting bull; these were the images of Spain embedded firmly in the minds of foreigners who required a familiar but still novel brand mark in order to make an association with that foreign place to which they would be "going foreign" for the first time.

The bull was a powerful brand image. It still is and it still may be the first image that comes to mind to many a potential visitor. But it comes to mind for very different reasons than it did in less-aware eras in the past. Despite this, the national government is due to grant the bullfight a form of protected status as an intangible of national culture. As far as the Osborne bull is concerned, various towns in Murcia, where there is no giant bull like the one to be found in Mallorca, would like there to be one.

The Osborne bull isn't of course the same as the bullfight. It does have cultural symbolism that doesn't have to mean that it is associated with the bullfight, and it doesn't have anything to do with matadors or white hankies being waved. All the same, it could be perceived as being associated, hence questions being asked about the image of the bull in its different guises as a means of promoting Spain in a contemporary international tourist market.

The baffling decision, now reversed, by Andratx town hall to use the Osborne bull and the wishes of towns in Murcia to get a statue of the bull can be seen as no more than a benign invoking of what is a well-loved symbol, but can one read more into this embracing of an image which is of the past? As with the government's wish to protect the bullfight, there is a sense of regression as opposed to progression. Is this indicative of a general attitude in Spain?

It is possible that it is. The national government appears intent on turning the clock back, an example of this being the emphasis on religion in the new education bill. Yet this, as with support for the bullfight, is a turning the clock back to days that should now be buried in Spain's present. Neither symbolise a Spain that is moving forward. Both are political manoeuvres but they are perhaps also representative of how a society, reeling from the uncertainties and humiliations that have come with economic crisis, seeks refuge in past certainties. For tourism, however, as this remains the future, the image of the bull, be it Osborne or in the bullring, is out of step with this future. Continuity with the past is fine but not when it presents an image that conflicts with a vastly more aware and socially conscious public overseas.


* Photo: Osborne Bull from Wikipedia.

Ozzy Osborne And The Missing Horns

Start the year as you mean to go on. Or finish the year as you have been doing during the year. And the year before. I feel really sorry for the Osborne bull. What's it ever done to anyone? It stands in a field, minding its own business, and what does it get for its trouble? Some berk goes and paints it or commits other atrocities on its noble presence. Now the statue has had its horns lopped off. A kind soul will probably make sure it gets the horns back, just like someone made sure it got its tackle back when it went AWOL, but restoration can't compensate for the distress. Leave it alone.

Whenever some group or other has a political, cultural or gender beef, it heads off in the middle of the night and gives the bull a good dose of Dulux, drapes flags over it, cuts bits off and then glories in the publicity for about as long as it takes for everyone to forget (about a day, if that) or for some other group to come along and subject the bull to further propagandist indignity. The latest lot is a bunch called Arran, the name given to the youth organisation that has succeeded the Maulets. Arran, Maulets, it's the same and it's bloody angry that Catalonia and the Catalan Lands don't have independence. So angry, it has gone and de-horned the Osborne bull.

Arran timed its attack on Ozzy to coincide with the annual demo in Palma that doesn't celebrate Mallorca day. Arran, and others, would prefer that it did celebrate Mallorca day, but as it was decided some years ago that Mallorca day would be the anniversary of the creation of the Kingdom of Mallorca and not when Jaume I invaded, 31 December isn't Mallorca day. I hope that's cleared that up. Nevertheless, or probably because, there is, every year, this demo, which occasionally gets out of hand. It seems to have passed off without too much incident this year, but probably only because more radical elements were off in the Mallorcan countryside vandalising the statue of a bull.

Arran had staged a grand demo as part of a "platform" that comprised most of the usual Catalanist suspects. Its poster for the demo made it clear that it wasn't only about independence. It was also about socialism and feminism and possibly some other isms that there wasn't space for on the poster. I'm sorry but what has feminism got to do with independence? Indeed, what has socialism got to do with it? It's not as though Artur Mas is a card-carrying Trot or even vaguely red.

Anyway, everyone might well simply forget about the business with the bull were it not for our good friends, the Círculo Balear. For a load of Catalan independentists, be they Arran or Maulet or whoever, to mess around with the bull, protected for its artistic and heritage status (Spanish, that is), is like a red rag to a bull where the Círculo are concerned, and they, or at least their founder and restored president Jorge Campos, have had many a run-in with the Maulets in the past. And these run-ins typically end up with a "denuncia", something in which the Círculo specialises where the Maulets are concerned. The bull is no different. The Círculo has fired off a denuncia to the Guardia. It is all, I'm sorry to have to say, rather predictable. Naughty independentist boys get up to some mischief and no good, and outraged defender of all things Castellano and Spanish, Sr. Campos, drags the law in, and they, the law, must be getting pretty brassed off with being dragged into such puerility - by both sides. I don't know about the Guardia, but personally I wish a plague on both houses; they are as bad as each other.

One does wonder, given the regularity of the vandalism that the bull has to endure, whether it might not get some form of protection. It is pretty vulnerable, stuck in a field on its own, but the field might give a clue as to the security the bull could get. How about half a dozen proper bulls? All of them extremely bloody angry themselves, so that when some angry Arrans or Maulets or whoever other lunatic decides to go on a spot of nocturnal decorating, the miscreants might get rather more than they bargained for. Not a docile, inanimate animal, but some distinctly animate animals with horns that are definitely not for tampering with. Olé.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - The Osborne bull goes Catalan

The object of all manner of graffiti and various campaigns, the Osborne bull statue near Algaida has now become embroiled in the defence of Catalan campaign, a Catalan flag having been knotted around its neck and slogans painted onto it.

See more: Diario de Mallorca