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The number of bulls killed in Spanish bullrings over the last decade has plunged by 56 percent, according to vegan charity PETA.
The animal rights organization has based this number on data recently released by Spanish authorities.
According to the stats, the number of bulls stabbed and killed dropped from approximately 16,000 (in 2008) to roughly 7,000 (in 2018), leading PETA to posit that the ‘archaic spectacle has fallen out of favor with the majority of Spaniards and tourists’.
Blood sport
Bullfighting is unpopular with many because of the suffering endured by the animal. Typically during a fight, multiple men will taunt a bull and stab him with harpoons until he becomes weak from blood loss.
Then a matador will then stab the animal, and if this doesn’t kill him, sever his spinal cord with a dagger. The bull, then paralyzed but sometimes still alive, will have his ears or tails cut off as a ‘trophy’.
Those who support the blood sport claim it is an important tradition, with famous matador Enrique Ponce once saying that fighters should ‘be treated with the same respect as those pursuing ‘artistic’ activities’.
‘Opposition to bullfighting’
But PETA says there is a growing opposition to the blood sport. In addition, legislative changes including parliamentary laws that effectively ended bullfighting in their autonomic regions have been passed in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands.
“Bullfighting has no place in a civilized society and is on its way out,” PETA Director, Elisa Allen, said.
“PETA is calling on tourists to stop propping up this bloody spectacle and on Pamplona to join the more than 100 Spanish cities and towns that declared themselves anti-bullfighting.”
