When Parliament gave the green light on October 25 to process the bill to ban the three most controversial forms of correbous (bull run, bull run and at sea), a buried battle opened between supporters and detractors of the festivities bullfighting, with the key matches (ERC, PSC and Junts) under the spotlight.
The first fight, now just in one of the first steps, with the proposal of the experts who will technically debate the alleged animal suffering in front of the deputies and public opinion before the law is voted on in Parliament, without a specific calendar.
The animal rights organizations report that the bullfighters have requested a hundred appearances with the aim of delaying the processing of the law. To the point of trying to exhaust, through an alleged "obstructionist" strategy, the legislature so that the proposed law of En Comú Podem and the CUP, at the request of animalists, is not voted on, already accepted in the process.
The Prou Correbous platform assures that, once the report has been created within the Parliament's Culture committee, the bullfighting sector has presented the parties with a list of one hundred proposed speakers. The animalists claim that, in addition to the Agrupació de Penyes Taurines de les Terres de l'Ebre, there are also the mayors of the Ebrec municipalities with the most tradition of bull parties, which are the majority in the south of Catalonia.
For animalists, the bullfighting strategy is evidence already admitted by the Terres de l'Ebre Bullfighting Association itself. "The debate can last three months, a year or the legislature can end and not have clarified anything, which would be a way to stop the blow", said the spokesman of the Ebrenca bullfighting group in an interview with Amposta Ràdio. Adolfo Leixà
The animalists' strategy is also clear: pressurize through public opinion, with the focus on Parliament and the parties that have supporters and detractors, with letters already sent to PSC, ERC and Junts deputies. They ask that the culture commission not accept the avalanche of appearances to discern whether or not there is suffering and animal abuse. The information they have received so far points to the admission of a large number of participants in the aforementioned presentation.
Prou Correbous, with the eight entities behind the bill to ban half of the 400 bullfighting events in the Terres de l'Ebre, has requested 18 attendees. They have already sent the proposals to the parties with the exception of PP, Vox and Ciutadans, against the veto and which in fact voted in favor of not admitting the law to the procedure. The animalists have proposed veterinarians, legal experts, ex-mayors, ex-deputies and representatives of civil society as speakers.
It is the parties that formally present the proposals for appearances before the Culture commission. "We would be talking about a total of presentations by around 120-130 people; it will be technically impossible for the bill to be debated in Parliament before elections are called in February 2025", says Aïda Gascón, spokeswoman for Prou Correbous.
The platform has analyzed the number of witnesses in legislative proposals and ensures that the average is in the thirties; the longest list was 66 in the Democratic Memory bill. "We are facing what could be, by far, the most shameless and cowardly attempt to stop a parliamentary debate. We ask PSC, ERC and Junts not to practice filibusterism and not be complicit in the obstructionism of democracy".
