The Ministry of Culture is going to eliminate bullfighting from the catalog of national awards that it gives out each year. The department headed by Ernest Urtasun, from Sumar, will not make the call for this year and is beginning the procedures for the definitive exclusion of the bulls from these awards, as sources from that Ministry have confirmed to elDiario.es.
The national bullfighting award was created in 2011 to add to those already given in Fine Arts, Theater, Music or other artistic disciplines. A financial award of 30,000 euros was established, 10,000 more, for example, than what the winners of the national Literature awards received. The Executive of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, already in his last months, wanted to recognize bullfighting as an “artistic discipline” and created the award while transferring the powers of the Ministry of the Interior to that of Culture.
These awards began to be awarded in 2013 and for a decade they have rewarded the “extraordinary merits of a bullfighting professional, in all its different manifestations.” Until now. The one in 2023, which was awarded to the bullfighter Julián López ‘El Juli’, will be the last.
The Ministry of Culture, which is now beginning the calls for the thirty national awards it grants each year, is going to exclude bullfighting from that list. In addition, this Friday the Urtasun department will launch a public consultation, the first procedure for the definitive elimination of the award. Afterwards, a ministerial order will be issued, the legal instrument that regulates the set of national awards, and which has undergone various changes since the awards were created in 1995.
Culture sources point out that the decision is “a faithful reflection of the values and feelings of society”, whose concern for animal welfare “has been increasing” while, these same sources indicate, “attendance at bullfighting shows is, According to data from the 2021-2022 period, only 1.9% of the population.”
The Ministry recalls that the decision is in line with other actions by Urtasun, which has already chosen not to award any Medal of Fine Arts to “anyone linked to the bullfighting sector” in 2023.
Sumar and Urtasun himself have been very critical of bullfighting in recent months. During a debate in the Senate last February, the Minister of Culture defended that “there is a majority of Spaniards with increasing sensitivity to animal rights” and that “they do not share animal abuse.”
Urtasun’s response was motivated by a question from the PP senator, Juan Manuel Ávila Gutiérrez, who had reproached him for some previous statements in which he defined bullfighting as an “unfair, sadistic and despicable activity, which has nothing to do with culture.” ”.
Already in 2016, the now Minister of Culture was the promoter of a joint declaration that showed the rejection of the decision of the Constitutional Court to annul the Catalan law that prohibited bullfighting in Catalonia. A total of 37 MEPs, among whom was Urtasun, warned in the text that bullfighting “is an unfair, sadistic and despicable activity” and that “it does not deserve to be legal in the legal system.”
Bullfighting has collapsed in the last two decades, despite the efforts of the administrations, mainly PP and Vox, to boost it with public money. In 2007, 3,651 bullfighting festivals were held in Spain; In 2022 there were only 1,546. Only 412 were bullfights, the rest were bullfights, bullfights or different celebrations.
This is reflected in the latest statistics published by the Ministry of Culture, which also indicate that only 1.9% of Spaniards attended a bullfighting show or celebration between 2021 and 2022. In the previous study, carried out in 2019, the data was stood at 8%.
Source: www.eldiario.es
