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Pirate bullfighter provokes a storm with Franco-era flag

A Spanish bullfighter has provoked a storm of controversy after parading around a bullring draped in the Franco-era flag of Spain.

Published: 18 September 2017 12:47 CEST
Pirate bullfighter provokes a storm with Franco-era flag
Photo: AFP

Juan José Padilla, known among fans as ‘El Pirata’ for the patch he wears over the eye he lost to a bull’s horn in 2011, made a lap of honour on Saturday after a bullfight in Villacarrillo in Jaén, southern Spain.

As is the custom, aficionados pleased with his performance threw items into the ring to be kissed by the matador and thrown back.

On this occasion however, when a Spanish flag landed at Padilla’s feet, he draped it over his shoulders like a cape and continued his lap of honour, clutching the ears of the bull he had been awarded for a great kill.

But the flag was not the modern flag of democratic Spain but one emblazoned with the eagle and shield used during the fascist dictatorship of General Franco.

Such flags are seen in public only at Falangist and neo-fascist rallies.

The scene quickly sparked outrage and criticism spread on social media.

Teresa Rodriguez, the Secretary General of Podemos in Andalucia wrote: “Juan José Padilla exalts fascism in Villacarrillo (Jaén). Shameful that this goes on and nothing is done.”

But Padilla insisted he had not been aware of the nature of the flag and apologized to anyone who had been offended.

“The flag was not my own, it was thrown to me from the public as happens in many plazas.

“I didn’t notice the eagle,” the 44-year-old torero from Jerez de la Frontera told El Mundo newspaper. “That symbol is a thing of the past and I live in the present.”

Padilla issued a statement in which he said: “I would like to say that I am proud to be a bullfighter and a Spaniard but I have never deliberately chosen to offend anyone and am neither nostalgic for anything nor wanting to provoke.”

Although he did add that Spain had more important problems than what flag he used – presumably referencing the looming constitutional crisis with Catalonia’s bid for independence:

“The problem for Spain right now isn’t whether the flag has the eagle or not.

“I’m sorry if someone is offended by me with that flag but at this difficult time what matters more is defending the colours of Spain. That is the greatest pride a patriot can have.”

READ MORE: Disaster prone one-eyed matador Juan José Padilla is gored again

 

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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