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BULLFIGHTING

10 brilliant alternatives for Barcelona’s bullring

Since Barcelona banned bullfighting there has been much debate over what should be done with the city's famous bullring, La Monumental. Here's The Local's pick of alternative uses for Barcelona's iconic venue.

Published: 22 May 2015 11:50 CEST
10 brilliant alternatives for Barcelona's bullring
La Monumental bull ring in Barcelona. Photo: Netraam/Wikimedia

The last bull was killed in La Monumental by Jose Tomas in September 2011 after Catalonia's parliament voted to ban bullfighting throughout the region. The famous plaza has since stood empty while debate rages about what should it should be converted into, there has even been a bid by a Qatari sheikh to turn it into a mosque.

Rather than yet another shopping centre or residential block conversion here are some ingenious ways in which we think it could be put to better use. 

Ball pool in the bullring

Photo: Michael Carrasquillo/Flickr

Where better for a ball pool than in a bull ring? Fun for all the family, and no goring involved, we reckon  “the world’s biggest ball pool” would prove an amazing addition to Barcelona’s cultural draws. It might already have the Sagrada Familia and Barcelona FC, but the Catalan capital is currently seriously lacking in balls.

Animal shelter

Photo: Shutterstock

Catalonia is jam packed with animal rights activists and it is one of the given reasons behind the bullfighting ban across the region. So what better way to recycle Barcelona’s bullring than by turning it into a shelter for abandoned animals?

Nightclub

Photo: micadew/Flickr

Why not turn the iconic building into a rave venue, complete with foam parties and visits from the hottest DJs in the world? It is certainly used to seeing a lot of sweating and panting. Maybe Madonna could party there after her latest bullfighting-themed tour?

Stag night venue

Photo: AFP

Barcelona’s problems with rowdy stag nights (or bachelor parties) have been well publicized, so what better for the red blooded male than confining them to a bullring to prevent them rampaging through the city, much like the confined raging bulls of the past.

Gourmet Food market

Photo: Shutterstock

Barcelona’s La Boqueria food market has had to limit tourist groups from entering, so we reckon the city is desperately in need of another market to satisfy tourists’ taste buds. Local businesses could bring their wares to the bullring which would be a showcase for the finest food Barcelona has to offer – and provide plenty of space so tour groups don't rub locals up the wrong way.

Garrison

Photo of soldiers AFP

If the Catalan nationalists do get their way and the region wins its independence from the rest of Spain then Barcelona may need to establish a base in which to house its newly created national army. Already somewhat fortified and with plenty of storage space, the abandoned bullring could be just the place for a garrison.

Quidditch Arena

Photo: Pottermore / Harry Potter Wiki

As The Local reported back in February, Spain’s fastest growing sport is Quidditch yet there is no official arena in Spain dedicated to holding the tournaments. It may not compete with the fictional Trillenium Stadium of J K Rowling’s imagination but it comes certainly comes close enough for muggles.

Cava Experience

Photo: Shutterstock

Catalonia is famous for its Cava with over 70,000 hectares of vinyards given over to its production so what better for those on a fleeting visit to the Catalan capital than one big space to celebrate the sparkling wine with areas dedicated to its production run by individual cava bodegas and of course its tasting.

Cheap accomodation

One giant youth hostel. With the proliferation ofcheap tourist lodgings cropping up across Barcelona provoking the ire of local residents like a red rag to a bull, why not bring them all together under one roof? Cover the Monumental with canvas, sling some cheap mattresses on the seats and rent lodgings by the night.

El Bulli

Since Ferran Adria, the godfather of molecular gastronomy, closed down his legendary restaurant El Bulli in 2011, foodies have been mourning its loss. Notoriously difficult to get a reservation, with more than a million entering an annual lottery for just 8,000 places in the years before it’s closure, maybe it’s time to reopen on a much larger scale with the creation of El Bulli-ring?

 

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CULTURE

French MP abandons bid to ban bullfighting

A bid to ban bullfighting in France has been abandoned, to the relief of lovers of the traditional blood sport and dismay for animal rights' activists.

Published: 25 November 2022 09:33 CET
French MP abandons bid to ban bullfighting

The 577-seat National Assembly had looked set to vote on draft legislation that would have made the practice illegal.

But the MP behind the bill withdrew it after lawmakers filed more than 500 amendments, many of them designed to take up parliamentary time and obstruct the vote.

“I’m so sorry,” Aymeric Caron, a La France insoumise (LFI) MP and animal rights’ campaigner, told the national assembly as he announced the decision in raucous and bad-tempered scenes.

Though public opinion is firmly in favour of outlawing the practice, the bill had already been expected to be rejected by a majority of lawmakers who
are wary about stirring up the bullfighting heartlands in the south of the country.

“We need to go towards a conciliation, an exchange,” President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday, adding that he did not expect the draft law to pass. “From where I am sitting, this is not a current priority.”

His government has urged members of the ruling centrist coalition not to support the text from the opposition LFI, even though many members are known to personally favour it.

During a first debate of the parliament’s law commission last week, a majority voted against the proposal by Caron, who denounced the “barbarism” of a tradition that was imported from Spain in the 1850s.

“Caron has antagonised people instead of trying to smooth it over,” a lawmaker from Macron’s party told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The bill proposed modifying an existing law penalising animal cruelty to remove exemptions for bullfights that can be shown to be “uninterrupted local
traditions”.

These are granted in towns such as Bayonne and Mont-de-Marsan in south west France and along the Mediterranean coast including Arles, Beziers and Nîmes.

Around 1,000 bulls are killed each year in France, according to the Observatoire National des Cultures Taurines.

READ ALSO EXPLAINED: Could bullfighting finally be banned in France?

Many so-called “bull towns” depend on the shows for tourism and see the culture of bull-breeding and the spectacle of the fight as part of their way of life – idolised by artists from Ernest Hemingway to Pablo Picasso.

They organised demonstrations last Saturday, while animal rights protesters gathered in Paris – highlighting the north-south and rural-versus-Paris divide at the heart of the debate.

“Caron, in a very moralising tone, wants to explain to us, from Paris, what is good or bad in the south,” the mayor of Mont-de-Marsan, Charles Dayot, told AFP recently.

Other defenders of “la Corrida” in France view the focus on the sport as hypocritical when factory farms and industrial slaughter houses are overlooked.

“These animals die too and we don’t talk enough about it,” said Dalia Navarro, who formed the pro-bullfighting group Les Andalouses in southern Arles.

Modern society “has more and more difficulty in accepting seeing death. But la Corrida tackles death, which is often a taboo subject,” she told AFP.

Previous judicial attempts to outlaw bullfighting have repeatedly failed, with courts routinely rejecting lawsuits lodged by animal rights activists, most recently in July 2021 in Nîmes.

The debate in France about the ethics of killing animals for entertainment is echoed in other countries with bullfighting histories, including Spain and Portugal as well as Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela.

In June, a judge in Mexico City ordered an indefinite suspension of bullfighting in the capital’s historic bullring, the largest in the world.

The first bullfight took place in France in 1853 in Bayonne to honour Eugenie de Montijo, the Spanish wife of Napoleon III.

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