Martyn in Europe

¡Ole Catalunya!

It ended in tears, joy and applauses, but following three months of intense public debate, Catalonia has exercised its autonomy by giving a big "no" to bullfighting, and in doing so joins the Canary Islands (they did so in 1991) in banning this tradition.

The debate and vote in the Catalan parliament, and within the wider Catalan community, was the result of a democratic response to a popular petition to prohibit bullfighting in Catalonia, one that was supported by more than 180,000 signatures.

Up until the vote in the Catalan Parliament (Wednesday) it looked too close to call, but for realists, the rejection of the proposed new Catalan Statute by Spain´s Constitutional Tribunal, was the last nail in the coffin of pro-bullfighting hopes; confirmed today, as Catalan nationalists and socialists voted in their Parliament for the end of the fiesta nacional in Catalonia.

The vote in favour of the ban (68 to 55, with nine abstentions), has provoked mild hysteria in the ranks of the Spanish conservative party. Jaime Mayor Oreja has talked of "provocation" and "revenge for the success of the national (football) team" and of "a deep national crisis", María Dolores de Cospedal described the decision as "nonsense" and attributed it to the "mania" of the ruling socialist party to "prohibit and deny freedom of the Catalans and the Spanish people", and the chairman of the Popular Party in Catalonia, Alicia Sánchez-Camacho, suggested that her party will seek to ensure that  Congress and the Senate will overrule the decision in favour of bullfighting, because it's "a festival of cultural interest", whilst elsewhere, the pro-bullfighting community in France fear a knock-on effect.

The political tension is surreal yet palpable, not on the streets, but within the leadership of the Popular Party, who seem more concerned about the Catalans banning bullfighting than in fixing the economic crisis. But, for all the hubris, the legal precedent of the ban on bullfighting in the Canary Islands makes one thing clear; the Popular Party have very little wiggle room on this issue.

So why now and why Catalonia?

For more than two decades animal rights campaigners in Spain have been working hard trying to make people aware of issues related to the cruelty to animals, and have pursued many avenues in many areas where the tradition and cruelty has trumped sensibility and reason; sometimes with success. But, nowhere has the active presence of animal rights advocates been more palpable that in Catalonia.

For this motive it is perhaps reasonable to suppose that the rationale for the ban on bullfighting in Catalonia is simply make a nationalist statement to the rest of Spain, but this would be a mistaken reading, as many people in Spain already understand, and are frequently sympathetic towards the aspirations of the Catalan nationalists, even if they don't always fully understand their motives or even agree with them.

That said, it is perhaps the case that many people in the Catalan speaking regions have an innate aversion to the old tourism marketing idea that "Spain is different" (after all, who in this day and age wouldn't be against such a horribly stale characterisation), it's an anachronism after all, but especially where Catalans are concerned, because although many (broadly)) have a profound sense of identity and local tradition (and pride of place in Catalonia is quite strong), the Catalans as a nation also have strong affinity and connection with the enlightenment, arts, philosophy, theology, science, technology, political thought and the democratic traditions of Europe; and to which a number of Catalans have made significant contributions.

But, the whole range of speculation regarding motives surrounding the vote are mainly irrelevant, as I suspect that the Catalan parliamentarians, who voted for the ban, did so after carefully examining the arguments between tradition and acceptable practice in a contemporary civil society. The fact that it irritated the right-wing was just the cherry on the ensaimada – not that ensaimadas usually come with cherries – but this is a celebration.

Martyn Richard Jones

28th July 2010