Bullfighting back on the agenda

[Perikles]

I would love to hear that this is a hoax but I am not holding out too much hope.

This used to be the case years ago, but I have the idea that it was banned at some point. 

[Janet]

It's a kind of misinterpretation rather than a hoax. As I understand it, horses aren't "used as bait" any more ... but used to be in Hemingway's time when the practice became notorious. Today, horses are blindfolded because if they could see they would panic or defend themselves, and the bull and picador wouldn't be able to get near each other. Certainly the picture in the petition is of a picador's horse in full padding for the rider-bull "fight".

The voicebox thing is a very common belief whether or not it's true. They all want shooting, especially the audiences. Apart from the horses and the bulls.

edit: cross posted with perikles.

[Myrtle Hogan-Lance]

Thanks Janet.  Maybe it is okay that they have misrepresented it a bit - anything to get this kind of cruelty stopped.  Blindfolding an animal so they don't panic while being put in mortal danger is like tying down a woman so she can't defend herself while being raped. 

Motherfuckers.  How can anyone treat a fellow creature that way? 

[Janet]

not content with stamping on Catalonian independence, nor indeed with overturning Catalonia's ban on bullfighting (last October, when the Constitutional Court said that the Spanish state has responsibility for cultural heritage and that the Catalan parliament had exceeded its authority), Madrid is now taking the Balearic Islands to court to try to overturn their ban on bullfighting too. The same argument is being used, that the Autonomous Communities do not have it in their power to ban cruelty to animals.

Pretty unbelievable, actually, and it'll be the Canaries' turn next, I imagine, since we were the first autonomous community to ban bullfighting back in 1991.

Good old PP, Franco's party, taking Spain back to the Civil War days ..

[Perikles]

That's interesting, because the law did not actually ban bullfighting - it just banned the injuring or killing of bulls, and limited the length of a bullfight to 10 minutes. They did it knowing that it was unconstitutional.

[Perikles]

Not actually bullfighting, but still the ritual winding up of a bull, which in this case resulted in the death of a bloke who was winding him up. That means the number of morons has diminished by one. No doubt the bull will be tortured to death later in the bullring, but good for him, I say.

[Myrtle Hogan-Lance]

Well done the bull!