Spain faces growing pressure to ban bullfighting

In January 2024, a Popular Legislative Initiative was registered in Spain to repeal Law 18/2013 on Bullfighting Cultural Heritage. Today, there are more than 700,000 signatures to demand that bullfighting cease to be Spanish cultural heritage.

Bulls suffering a slow, painful death, being loaded into the bucket of an excavator in full view of children and bystanders, mistreated: bullfighting is no longer an acceptable spectacle, and more and more Spaniards know that.

That is the reason more than a hundred activists have urged the Congress of Deputies, Spain’s lower parliamentary house, to approve the Popular Legislative Initiative (ILP). Backed by 715,606 signatures, the initiative asks that they revoke the law declaring bullfighting a cultural heritage and “limits the competencies of regional and local authorities to ban these spectacles.”

“We have to build a culture of life, not of death and violence”

The promoting commission of ILP, No Es Mi Cultura, has submitted all signatures to the Electoral Census Office of Madrid to be validated, and this must happen in a space of no longer than six months. If at least 500,000 signatures are confirmed, the Congress of Deputies will be bound to submit the proposal to a vote within another six months.

“We must build a culture of life and not of death and cruelty. Culture in a democracy is something that one chooses, not something that is imposed,” ILP’s promoting commission spokesperson Marta Esteban has said. She has called on all political parties, and the governing Socialist Party (PSOE) in particular, to support this proposal when it is presented to a plenary session, saying that “this is an issue of rights and freedoms.”

The future of bullfighting in Spain

Meanwhile, the Madrid Electoral Census Office must also verify the signatures collected. Once at least 500,000 of these are proven valid, the Congress of Deputies—Spain’s equivalent of the House of Representatives—will have a maximum of six months to deliberate on the proposal. According to figures on the ILP committee website, as early as 2018, only 8% of Spaniards had attended any form of bullfighting event, and just 5.8% had attended an arena. In addition, recent polls indicate that more than half of the Spanish public supports banning or restricting bullfighting.

What is the Spanish Parliament’s position now?