Barcelona Travel Guide

Spain’s Catalonia region (where Barcelona is included) outlawed bullfighting yesterday, becoming the country’s first mainland region to do so.
Cheers broke out after in the local 135-seat legislature after the speaker announced the ban has been passed by vote of 68 to 55 with nine abstentions.
During the debate , protesters from both sides rallied outside the parliament building in Barcelona.

As is imagine protesters carry posters with pictures of bleeding animals. while pro-bullfighting groups carried, slogans such as Libertad y Toros (Freedom & Bulls).
The ban in the wealthy seaside region around Barcelona will take effect in 2012. Catalonia is a powerful region with its own language and culture and a large degree of self-rule.

The centre-right Popular Party, which favours Spain as a unified country run from Madrid – and also supports bullfighting- is considering a legal bid to overturn the ban.

However Catalonia only has one bull ring, in Barcelona, while the other one is turned into a shopping mall.
it stages 15 fights a year which are rarely sold out, out of the nationwide total of 1000 per season..

This result will energise animal rights groups intent on seeking bans in other regions.

Josep Rull, a Convergence and Union spokesman said: “The suffering and death of a living being cannot be turned into public spectacle.”

The first Spanish region  to outlaw the practice was the Canary Island in 1991.