Semi Naked Activists Hold A Demonstration Against Bullfighting In Mallorca

A group of activists from AnimaNaturalis and CAS International stripped half naked in Palma to demand an end to bullfighting in the Balearic Islands.

As bullfighting season began in the Plaza de Toros in Palma, the animal rights group, AnimaNaturalis, supported by local protest group Mallorca Against Bullfighting  held the demonstration outside Palma City Hall on Sunday, August 6.

“The new conservative government of the Popular Party and VOX are promoting this type of show without listening to ethical reasons or looking at the statistics of low interest in this type of show” explained Eliana Guerreño, coordinator of AnimaNaturalis.

“Traditions are a way of expressing who we are, and Balearic society is far from identifying with spilled blood and the last breath of a tortured animal ” she added.

According to official data from the Ministry of Culture, the number of bullfighting shows in the bullring has maintained a sustained decline from 2015 onwards, not counting the years of the pandemic.

According to the Ministry of Culture, said Guerreño, only 8 per cent of the population attended a bullfighting show in the 2018-2019 period.

Only 5.9 per cent of them attended a bullfight at a bullring, and a fifth of all attendees did so with free admission.

The same study indicates that 80 per cent of bullfighting events in Spain are concentrated in the provinces of Madrid, Toledo, Salamanca, Ávila and Cuenca.

At present, the Canary Islands and Catalonia are considering abolishing bullfighting.

In Asturias this type of event has also ceased to be held after the city of Gijón’s decision not to allow them.

In the Balearic Islands, regulations were approved in 2017 to follow in the footsteps of the rest of the Autonomous Communities that have prohibited bullfighting, but the Constitutional Court reversed this progress, at the request of the government of Mariano Rajoy, who had declared it as cultural heritage in 2013.

There are just two municipalities in Mallorca which allow bullfighting, and these are Inca and Palma