Catalonia votes to ban Barcelona’s bullfights

Catalonia has become the first mainland region in Spain to ban bullfighting. The ban was approved by Catalonia's 135-seat legislature by a majority of 68 votes to 55, with nine abstaining, and will take effect on January 1, 2012.

Catalonia, in the north-east of Spain and home to the country's second-largest city, Barcelona, follows the example of the Canary Islands who outlawed bullfighting in 1991.

Cheers erupted in the chamber when the result of the vote was announced and outside the news was greeted with joy by hundreds of anti-bullfighting demonstrators, many of whom waved placards urging an end to animal cruelty. Also present were a number of flag-waving pro-bullfighting demonstrators defiantly chanting Libertad y Toros.

The ban is symbolic more than anything. Barcelona possesses Catalonia's only working bullring, the Plaza de Toros Monumental, and it stages just 15 bullfights a year, where tourists are likely to outnumber locals. Meanwhile the rest of Spain hosts around 1,000 ‘corridas' each season.

Nonetheless the centre-right Popular Party, which opposes the ban, sees it as another signal of the Catalan nationalists' desire to mark their region's difference from the rest of Spain by rejecting one of the nation's most famous traditions.

"It is all about nationalism," said Rafael Luna of the Popular Party, which is considering launching a legal challenge to have the ban overturned. "Bullfighting is part of Catalonia's historical and cultural heritage but Catalan nationalists oppose it because it also is a symbol of Spain."

Bullfighter Jose Tomas told the Madrid newspaper La Razon: "To think they can steal a part of all you admire, that is so important to your life, your profession, it's hard."

Catalonia, one of the wealthiest regions in Spain, is fiercely proud of its culture and history and has long campaigned for independence. Yet according to the Catalan Nationalist Party (Convergència i Unió), what motivated the Catalans to outlaw bullfighting was its barbarity.

Describing the sport as a "gratuitous mistreatment of animals", Josep Rull declared his pleasure at the vote and expressed his hope that the ban might soon be extended to the rest of the country: "We don't want to go against Spain, but all societies evolve and we need to determine if this tradition is consistent with the values of the 21st century."

The morality of bullfighting, for long a contentious issue in Europe, was tackled by one of ths sport's most famous fans, the American writer Ernest Hemingway. In his book on the subject, Death in the Afternoon, published in 1932, he wrote: "I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after." ·