Eight communities from the Popular Party and one from the PSOE – Castilla-La Mancha – have joined forces to launch the Senate award for Bullfightingwhich comes to fill the gap in the award that the Minister of Culture eliminated last year, Ernest Urtasun. The new award, which will be presented on January 30 in Madrid, arises from a PP motion in the Upper House that urged the Executive to restore the National award and proposed the creation of this recognition while the government’s veto on bullfighting was maintained. . The financial award will be the same as the prize had before its suppression –30,000 euros– and has the joint support of the Senate and the Toro de Lidia Foundation, in addition to Madrid, Andalusia, Aragon, Cantabria, Castilla y León, Extremadura, Comunidad Valenciana, Murcia and Castilla-La Mancha.
The world of bullfighting thus reacts to the veto imposed by the Ministry of Culture, which with Urtasun at the helm has chosen to withdraw any type of recognition and subsidy to the sector. There are, essentially, two: the Gold Medals for Merit in Fine Arts and the National Bullfighting Award. In the first case, Sumar’s minister and spokesperson had enough to exclude the Festival from the list of winners, something common until his arrival. In the second case, Urtasun had to publish a ministerial order that revoked the award that the former socialist president had created. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in 2011. The head of Culture justified his decision in the lack of “consensus” as there were “activities linked to bullfighting” that “are rejected by broad sectors of society.” Urtasun argued that in the public consultation launched by his department some three thousand legal or physical entities supported the measure.
There were several communities that presented allegations and publicly criticized the decision of a minister whose prerogatives include the promotion of bullfighting. One of the most belligerent was one governed by a leader of the PSOE, a party that governs the country with the support of the Urtasun party: Castilla-La Mancha. Your president, Emiliano García-Pagewent so far as to criticize Urtasun’s “gauche divine that gives cards of modernity.” Now the socialist has joined with eight other PP communities to launch the Senate award, which will remain in force until the National award is awarded. In the vote of the Upper House in which the motion that gave rise to this award was voted, the socialists abstained. In a subsequent vote in Congress, in which the recovery of the National award was requested at the request of the PP, the socialists instead voted against.
Minister Urtasun has navigated through this socialist ambiguity to become stronger in his anti-bullfighting stance. If in his first year at the head of Culture he has spoken of “animal abuse” to revoke the National award and even deny applause to figures like El Juli in a ceremony, now he has his sights set on the possible repeal of the law that protects bullfighting as cultural heritage. His party has promoted and supports a popular legislative initiative that seeks to invalidate the law approved in 2013, with the PP in the Government, precisely thanks to a popular legislative initiative. Urtasun is subscribed to the discourse that less than 2 percent of Spaniards go to bullfighting celebrations, but refers to the 2021-2022 period, which includes the closures of the bullrings due to Covid, when there were no shows of any kind. According to the yearbook of cultural statistics, between 2006 and 2019 there was attendance at bullfighting shows of between 8 and 9.8 percent of the population. In 2024, a total of 1,474 bullfighting events were held, a figure that is 3.44 percent higher than that registered in 2019.
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