Bullfighting and the fight for Spain’s future

Being sanctimonious about foreigners and their cruelty to animals has long been a British tradition. The taste for dog meat in parts of Asia seems to incense many who perhaps should have matters closer to home to worry about – such as our collective addiction to cheap, factory farmed meat. When I was a child in the 1980s, ghoulish Spanish practices usually involving donkeys at some out of the way fiesta were a mainstay of Esther Rantzen’s unfathomably popular Sunday night programme, That’s Life. But sentimentality about animals has a way of catching on: South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in has suggested banning the consumption of dog meat and Spain is now debating whether children under the age of 16 should be prohibited from going to bullfights.

Restrictions on bullfighting are part of an ongoing culture war on the Iberian peninsula not that dissimilar to the battles around fox hunting in the UK nearly 20 years ago.