The Government of San Sebastián de los Reyes continues to show off its passion for bullfighting, for which it does not spare money in its budgets. To the traditional running of the bulls that it schedules in August during the patron saint festivities of Cristo de los Remedios – some at night with the attendance of minors – it will now add the so-called “White Running of the Bulls” that the PP established after its arrival in government: they take place in January and in This time they will mean a total expenditure of 200,000 thousand euros for the municipal coffers, double that of 2023.
The total budget for bullfighting activities in San Sebastián de los Reyes will exceed 600,000 euros in 2025, and the two-year contract can be extended for another year, according to Izquierda Independiente (ISSR), one of the opposition groups that champions these complaints before the “passivity” and “complicity” that he attributes to the PSOE, which previously governed the City Council in coalition with Ciudadanos.
The new bull runs “invented” by the new government team led by PP mayor Lucía Fernández, will take place on January 18 and 19, 2025 during the festivities of the patron saint San Sebastián Mártir. The bidding documents “negotiated without advertising and with direct award” reveal that just the acquisition of the cattle that will run on those two days will cost 80,000 euros, more than double what was spent the previous year.
The cost of installing the fence amounts to 57,200 euros, to which must be added the costs of security, insurance and adaptation of the pens. “All in all, we are spending 200,000 euros on bullfighting activities for the bull runs in January that were never a tradition in San Sebastián de los Reyes,” denounces Izquierda Independiente.
For the councilor of this group, Carmen Palacios, “this expense is unnecessary and represents thousands of euros from the taxpayer that will not be used to address the real and most pressing needs of the neighbors.” The investment to acquire the cattle exceeds the 75,000 euros that Mayor Lucía Fernández took away from education and maintenance of public schools and improvement of sports facilities to give them to the bullfighting celebrations held in summer. “It is clear that the PP’s priority is not the well-being of Sanse,” he laments.
Environmental groups from the municipality have joined the party’s complaints and, more timidly, the only councilor who has Más Madrid-Verdes Equo there.
The Bullfighting Peñas, against the Independent Left
The denunciation of this disproportionate increase in spending for the bullfights has caused the Federation of Bullfighting Clubs and Associations of San Sebastián de los Reyes to issue a statement
In the letter, the bullfighters describe as “recurrent, opportunistic and partisan” Torres’ claim to the municipal government to put an end to these events, while they blame him for “defending those traditions in his town”, Beas de Segura (Jaén), where his family resides.
For the Federation, the so-called “White Encierros”, “apart from promoting bullfighting and traditions, are an economic engine for the municipality.” In the statement they also refer to “article 46 of our Constitution, which says that Bullfighting is Cultural Heritage” and that “public powers must guarantee its conservation and promote its enrichment”, as well as “the law that declares Bullfighting Heritage.” Cultural in which it is specified that public powers are also obliged to protect it.”
The Government of Pedro Sánchez repealed the National Bullfighting Awards in September of this year. To this end, it opened a public consultation to citizens that achieved more than 90% support for its withdrawal. Sources from the Ministry of Culture headed by Ernest Urtasun explained that “the motivation” for eliminating the award “has taken into account the evolution of Spanish society.” The Survey of Cultural Habits and Practices in Spain shows that only 1.9% of the Spanish population attends bullfighting shows, observing an interannual decrease in 2023 of 4.7% in the number of bullfighting celebrations held in Spain.
This is not the case of San Sebastián de los Reyes, whose rulers continue to promote this type of celebrations. The August festivities of this municipality in honor of the Cristo de los Remedios have always taken a good pinch of the municipal budgets, both when the socialists governed and now with the PP, which since the last elections in May 2023 has taken over in the Town Hall. In fact, the Madrid town is famous for its desire to promote bullfighting, to the point that it is known as the “little Pamplona.”
The previous mayor, from the PSOE, Narciso Romero, also decided in 2022 to increase the bull runs scheduled by the town from six to eleven, which meant the upward modification of the contract with the company that manages the bullring of the town up to 760,000 euros.
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