One of the most terrible blood fiestas took place in Spain on September 17. This year’s bull, Vulcano, like hundreds of brave bulls before him, was lanced to death at 11.15 by a mob in Tordesillas. 50,000 people watched the spectacle.

This slaughter is protected as a Spanish cultural heritage, and readers will be aware that year after year, we in QCA, in company with other animal protection groups in Spain and worldwide, make representations each time to the authorities, joined by our friends in the Anglican Society for the Welfare of Animals, Catholic Concern for Animals and the Unitarian Animal Welfare Society.

The latest from PACMA – the Animals Party in Spain: there is increasingly critical press reporting of the event, and matters are developing on the political front.

PACMA took a letter and information dossier on the Toro de la Vega cruelty to Martin Shulz, President of the European Parliament and published an open letter to MEPs in ‘The Parliament Magazine’

On Saturday September 14, the biggest demonstration in Spain in defence of animals took place, supported by 50 organisations and widely covered by the media.

Please click on:  la mayor manifestación en defensa de los animales en España. Text in Spanish.

More than 15.000 people demonstrated their rejection of the Toro de la Vega festival in Madrid in front of the PP (People’s Party) and PSOE (Socialist Workers’ Party) buildings. They are responsible for the killing of Vulcano in Tordesillas, for authorising the event and organising it.

On Tuesday, September 17, the day of the killing, all TV and media broadcasted images PACMA videoed in Tordesillas, sights which should shame the politicians who consented to it.

Click on the Spanish for this, but please be warned, you will be distressed;  las imágenes que grabamos en Tordesillas

Precisely because of that, PACMA took a letter to Congress which they handed to Mariano Rajoy (People’s Party and head of government) and Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, (Socialist Workers’ Party and leader of the opposition) making them aware of their responsibility for what was taking place at that very moment in Tordesillas.

~QCA thanks friends in PACMA for this information. www.pacma.es

And:

The ICV – Iniciativa per Catalunya Verde, the Catalan Greens – announced that next week a proposal will be presented to Congress to abolish the Toro de la Vega festival. Laia Ortiz said in a press release that although this is not the only act of barbarity against animals in Spain, held under the cloak of tradition, it is one of the most cruel and representative acts of animal torture permitted.

So the Environmental Commission of Congress will debate the Izquierda Plural (presented by the left wing parties IU –  Izquierda Unida, United Left,  ICV- Iniciativa per Catalunya Verde and CHA- Chunta Aragonesista) which requests the government to set up the mechanisms and legal procedures necessary to avoid instances of cruelty to animals such as the Toro de la Vega.

Thanks to Animanaturalis for this added information:

www.animanaturalis.org

And:

According to Europa Press,  nearly 100 university professors have signed a manifesto against the Toro de la Vega festival.

Five professors from the University of Valladolid, the region in which Tordesillas is located, two from Salamanca and one from León, signed up. They described the Toro de la Vega festival as ” an event in which the entertainment of some means the pain, fear, anguish and death of an innocent victim”…