Urtasun, the bulls and the majorities

This Friday, May 3, to no one’s surprise, Urtasun announced the withdrawal of the National Bullfighting Award. It is known that the minister does not like bulls, and that, like many Spaniards, he considers them to be animal abuse. I won’t put a but to that. Anyone who has been in a square has been able to see it. However, there is something about the arena (the blood, the atavism, the ritual) that hypnotizes him.

My first memory of the bulls is when they didn’t let the children enter El Castañar (Béjar) because it was violent, but they let us see how they took out the bulls, and we ran to follow the trail of blood, needles, water and albero. It had a strange ancient appeal. I don’t know if the majority of Spaniards are for or against bullfighting. The majority of Spaniards, I’m afraid, think what the speaker in turn says. No one is going to subject bullfighting to a plebiscite, least of all Urtasun, who sees little of the vote and a lot of “because I said so.”

The bulls have been gradually withdrawing from the public conversation, although they remain Zero Laying on La 2, on most regional television stations (between bullfights, bullfights, and parties of disturbing brutality) and on video on demand, not to mention the radio. Bullfighting, like boxing, has been moving away from popular taste in favor of football, in which the blood, when it flows, does so among the spectators. In the nineties, the world of culture was devoted to bullfighting (with Sabina and Almodóvar at the helm and foreign incursions such as that of Madonna with the bullfighter Emilio Muñoz for the video clip of Take a Bow) and at some point this changed.

The animal movement (made up of generally very intolerant people) has not had as much to do with it as they would like. It has more to do with the changes in life, which are becoming faster and more subtle. Bullfighting, if it doesn’t have something, is subtlety. We have changed the sacrifice of the bull for the public immolation of human figures. And in the end we have a vein that needs to purge its violent impulses, whether through Christians, witches, crazy people, bulls, soccer players, or grotesque characters (not so long ago, they were also disabled). What changes is the aesthetics. We are what we are, and no minister is going to change that.

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