“Many people come on vacation to Dénia, a coastal town in Alicante. Many Germans, English, French also live here, many Ecuadorians, Colombians, Moroccans, Indians, there are many cultures and many nationalities,” explains Laura, from Dénia Animal Save. “And bullfighting is no longer popular, the vast majority reject it, both tourists and temporary residents. Why allocate a public budget to this, instead of investing in much more important things, in everything that should benefit, for the good, such as medicine, scholarships, actions in favor of people without resources, soup kitchens, aid to animal shelters, which would require greater investments than what they receive?
“People of other nationalities think it’s bullshit, it’s not done anywhere,” explains Lisa, a young German. “We, Germans, English or Swiss, don’t like to come. We like to see the bulls and cows in their habitat,” he emphasizes. “There aren’t many people who come from here either, nor to the sea Even the bulls and outsiders don’t believe it’s mistreatment.” If young people from other countries participate, “it’s just to be crazy, they’re drunk.” What kind of scheme allows people to give public money for such aberrant violence? Patriotic soflams and rallying oratories attempt to maintain the hackneyed and brutalizing bullfight which, alongside the budgetary pocket, fuels sexist fantasies which could well fit into what the American writer Peter Trachtenberg defines: “An incomplete facsimile , cruel but not creative masculinity, powerful but not really powerful. Is there a non-explicit contract between the so-called Spanish transition and these cruel activities? “Anyone who doesn’t like it shouldn’t go there,” they summarize in the official authorities. “These animals live better than us,” they say. “It’s a tradition and it must be respected,” they say.
Álvaro, also from Dénia Animal Save, corroborates that “for the most part foreigners do not support celebrations with animals, many people from other countries living in Spain join the protests to show their rejection.” It is a citizenship that does not understand “how everyone’s money can be used to mistreat animals”. Most are unaware that their taxes as residents are used for this, “and when we tell them, they are stunned.”
In Dénia, as in the rest of Spain, signatures are being collected for the ILP (Popular Legislative Initiative) “It’s not my culture” -with a deadline until November-, in order to repeal the law which declares bullfighting as cultural heritage. “Unfortunately, people of other nationalities cannot sign because they do not have a DNI (National Identity Document), they have a NIE (Foreign Identity Number), which frustrates and worries them because they pay their taxes, are residents, have properties but since they do not have the official Spanish document, they do not participate, I know a lot of people who would like to sign,” reveals Julia, member of the feminist collective and collaborator. the Animal Protection Agency. “We do a lot of activism with the signatures, taking advantage of each show, I collected a lot,” he explains.
Dénia has “a large percentage of foreign population who are against bullfighting. In collaboration with Dénia Animal Save, we intervened during the plenary session of the City Council, because there was a proposal from the PP and Vox to revitalize and strengthen the booze at the sea. This show must end. He’s a caveman. It’s anachronistic. This must stop not only because of the harm caused to an innocent animal, but also because of what is left of us, humans, our species, participating and having fun with such atrocities,” concludes Julia.
For his part, Diego Nevado, spokesperson for the said animal association, emphasizes that “the PSOE and Compromís voted against; Perhaps Compromís is more pro-labor than the PSOE. Publicly, they admitted that just by reducing it, they had saved ten thousand euros for the neighborhood. They say that they have reduced it by half thanks to the animal welfare law, but the truth is that it is after the painful death of a bull, which occurred again this year in Jávea and which, as they acknowledge, has caused serious damage to their image. at the international level. For the moment, I don’t think it will come back in this legislature.”
The writer Antonio Gala questioned the illusory supremacy of the human being over the rest of the planet’s inhabitants, a species, he wrote, which “allows itself to be distracted by killing geese or roosters during frightening celebrations; he drives calves or bulls without art and without respect; “He kills for the sake of killing, without hunger serving as an excuse.” And thus, naturalizing horror, violence is instilled. Nevado remembers that last July, during an anti-bullfighting rally in Valencia, “the tourists said they didn’t understand how these events continue to take place.” Julia comments that the municipalities “propose that there be veterinarians present in the boos at the seato try to whitewash the mistreatment inflicted a little.
Why don’t drownings and heart attacks in livestock cause outrage? “Unfortunately, as we do not see blood, we do not see abuse, it is considered simple pleasure in which the bull does not die; and they die. Laura says, with hope, “that people are evolving and want something different, a party where everyone can participate and where no form of violence is practiced with animals. The majority of Dénia residents consider it absurd, boring and no longer see the fun in anything that involves the participation of a cow or bull. There is no point in feeling powerful in front of a cornered animal, defenseless and shocked, at forty degrees in the shadows, an animal that has been there for more than an hour, before going out into the square or on parade, or the entrance to bousin a metal box, which is like being inside a pot on a lit fire and, when they come out of there, they are so shocked that they rush and it seems that they are brave bulls, when in reality they are heifers and young bulls. This public money intended for bullfighting “serves no other purpose than to make four machirulos believe that they are gods”.
Deaths of bystanders and participants, injuries and concussions do not seem to be sufficient reasons to prohibit such sadistic activities, in which “the animal tries to defend itself by any means possible and its only weapon is its antlers ; Unfortunately, there are many people who die, animals too, not to mention the injuries caused to the nose when trying to escape through places where they cannot, they get stuck in the horns, there are bent legs, falls and, of course, drowning. The aforementioned Antonio Gala would confess: “I am always shocked by man’s indifference to the torment he causes in animals; This is only comparable to his indifference to the torments of his fellow men when they are not before his eyes. »
