While Ernest Hemingway tossed and turned in his Idaho grave, Spanish animal rights activists and nationalists the world over celebrated Catalonia’s final bullfight.
Many supporters of the ban trace their success to the ghastly and anachronistic nature of bullfighting, in 21st century Spain. The fact of the matter —one that continues to be overlooked—is that the matador’s dance with death has seen its day because of financial challenges.
An unprecedented crowd of 20,000 onlookers witnessed the final corrida on Sunday at Monumental arena, Barcelona’s last functioning bullring. Tickets for Sunday’s event, after an immediate sell-out, went for 5-times face value on the black market. But aside from Sunday, dwindling ticket sales and general ennui have contributed to the torero’s decline
For “debt-saddled towns,” bullfighting events are no longer economically feasible.
Local towns and cities have long relied on bullfights in the summer months to spur revenue and growth. Since the onset of the financial crisis in 2007, however, “the number of bullfights held in Spain has fallen by just over a third… to 1,724 last year from 2,622 in 2007, according to government data.”
Spanish farmers and their pastures, far from cities’ bullrings, also felt the crunch.
Bull-breeding farms flourished in years past due to heavy European farm subsidies provided by EU support. This created an excess supply of bulls, which in turn forced farmers to send their stock to slaughterhouses. Sending bulls to slaughter-houses, rather than arenas, resulted in a pay cut in excess of €5,500.
Some in the Twitterverse are keen to observe that subsidies, which support Spanish bullfights, derive from many countries in the Union, who declared bullfighting illegal years ago.
Whether arguing for animal rights or for bullfighting’s rich cultural history, it is hard to justify taxing a non-bullfighting country, such as the U.K., in order to support Spanish corridas.
Aside from colorful and emotionally provocative arguments, bullfighting, from a fiscal standpoint, remained on a tenuous stilt that was bound to tip over sooner or later. Corridas remain legal in other parts of Spain but their future appears ill-fated as well.
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