The tickets were sold out quickly: For the first time since the Corona break, bullfights are taking place again in Spain.
Madrid – Most Spaniards are not interested in bulls. Many would like to ban the Tauromaquia. Others, however, are aficionados with a passionate heart – on Monday they pounced on the tickets for the first bull spectacle of the year – after a break due to the coronavirus – this Sunday in Las Ventas: all 6,000 tickets are said to have been sold in an hour and a half.
Las Ventas is the cathedral of Tauromaquia, its Olympic stadium, which was last closed to bulls for 19 months, first because of the winter break, then because of Corona. But the desire for the killing ritual has remained. Now she is being satisfied again.
Corona in Spain: For the first time bullfights took place again – a bloody tradition
May 2nd is Madrid’s regional holiday, as the Spanish capital commemorates the uprising against the Napoleonic troops in 1808. This year, however, May 2nd is also the day before the regional elections, which is why the opening of Las Ventas can also be seen as an election campaign . The conservative regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso is vying for the votes of the far right, who are usually the greatest friends of staged bull death. “I respect and appreciate the world of the bull enormously,” says Ayuso, just in case, “and especially the bull spectacles, because of the art they contain and because of the enjoyment they give their many aficionados.”
Corona in Spain: bullfights – twenty torturous minutes for the bull
It is a cautious start: The Madrid arena, the third largest in the world, can accommodate not just 6,000, but almost 24,000 spectators, but restrictions still apply due to the pandemic – albeit not particularly strict. Ayuso is popular with many Madrid residents precisely because it is rather lax with the risk of viruses. In Madrid the interiors of cafés and restaurants are allowed to be open. On the other hand, a particularly large number of people died in the capital and its surrounding area, the infection rates are well above the national average, almost half of the intensive care units are occupied by Covid patients. Open-air events like on Sundays are, on the other hand, not dangerous – at least for the public.
It is just as clear to the aficionados as to their opponents that the bull suffers in the arena. It is 20 agonizing minutes at the end of an usually four-year existence on the meadow. Compared to other farm animals, fighting bulls do well for most of their lives. The more expensive the bull breeders are: inside their work: around 5000 euros per animal. The slump in business for a year has therefore hit the industry particularly hard. “I am now sending them straight to the slaughterhouse,” the breeder Juan Pedro Domecq tells the business newspaper “Cinco Días”. “That hurts not only economically, but also emotionally.” An aficionado cannot imagine a more miserable end for a fighting bull than the slaughterhouse. In addition, the breeder there only receives 500 euros for the animal.
Bloody bullfights in Spain: a feast day for toreros
Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s Madrid regional government paid the breeders 4.5 million in emergency aid in the autumn to help them survive the crisis. If it comes to Pablo Iglesias, the founder and Madrid’s top candidate of the left-wing party Podemos, such subsidies should come to an end as soon as possible. At the beginning of April he promised “the end of all aid for the Tauromaquia”. According to current polls, he will probably not be able to keep his promise: Madrid will probably vote conservatively in the majority.
Even if most of the Spaniards reject the Tauromaquia, there is no clear majority in favor of their ban. People just don’t care about the spectacle. A hard core of aficionados – around eight percent of the population – goes to an arena at least once a year. For them this Sunday is a feast day. (Martin Dahms) Ten minute ritual: Mallorca returns to bullfighting
Header list image: © Abel Alonso / dpa
