Spaniards against ban on bullfights

MOST Spaniards do not like the centuries-old spectacle of bullfighting but also do not believe it should be banned, a poll in El Pais newspaper showed yesterday after Catalonia outlawed the activity.

In a poll of 500 people conducted by Metroscopia, 60 per cent said they did not enjoy bullfighting though 57 per cent said they disagreed with the move by the parliament of the northern Spanish region to ban it.

Catalonia will be the first mainland region to make the Spanish tradition illegal when the law comes in to effect in 2012 and, while animal rights activists have fought to stop the practice for years, most surveyed said the ban was political.

Some 58 per cent of those polled across the country said the move was due to Catalonia's separatist aspirations from the rest of Spain, while only 36 per cent put the ban down to animal cruelty.

A manifesto written in protest at the move was read out on Sunday in fifteen bullrings throughout Spain, as well as other rings in France and Portugal and including the Monumental de Barcelona which has had its first fight since the controversial law was passed.

"This is an embarrassment used by the Catalans against the Spanish nation," head of a professional bullfighting association Mesa del Torro Eduardo Martin Penato told Spanish radio yesterday.