Bullfighting has been banned in Catalonia, but is more popular than ever in France
Catalonia’s decision to proscribe bullfights has less to do with sentiment towards animals than with regional assertiveness. Nothing wrong with that, of course: as a localist, I’m all for provinces and regions drawing up their own laws. But don’t make the mistake of extrapolating too widely, as the BBC has, from a decision based largely on Catalan particularism. Bullfighting is not in decline in the rest of Spain. Ticket sales were rising year-on-year until the downturn hit.
Tauromachy has never been as popular in Catalonia as in the rest of the peninsula. As long ago as 1931, Hemingway observed that “although bullfighting flourishes in Barcelona, it is on a fake basis because the public that attends goes as to a circus for excitement and entertainment.” Papa put this down to a difference in character: Catalans, he believed, were too mercantile and practical a people to be much interested in death. Lacking the morbidity of Castilians, they rarely understood the poetry of the rite being performed on the sands. Missing the tragedy, they saw only the gore, and so were revolted.
There may, for all I know, be something in this analysis. Certainly Catalonia has never produced a matador of the first rank. But the odd thing is that, across the border in French Catalonia, toreo is more popular then ever. True, bullfighting in France generally has enjoyed something of a renaissance over the past 15 years, but there is more to it than that. In the border villages of Rousillon, taurine festivals are drenched with Catalan imagery: folk songs, picaresque costumes, the ubiquitous red-and-gold bars of the flag. The little town of Céret now hosts one of the most important festivals of the season, its people proudly proclaiming themselves “Catalans i aficionados”.
There is a pleasing symmetry in all this. North of the Pyrenees, French Catalans celebrate bullfighting in order to flaunt their distance from Paris; south of the Pyrenees, Spanish Catalans ban it in order to flaunt their distance from Madrid. Vive la différence! ¡Viva la diferencia! Visca la diferència!
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