“To love bulls is, every afternoon, around five o’clock, to believe in the Three Wise Men and go to meet them” (Jean Cau)
The appointment of Ernest Urtasun has been received with both concern and criticism by bullfighting professionals and fans, in response to the positions against bullfighting of the new Minister of Culture of the Government of Spain.
It is enough to review newspaper and video libraries to justify such anxiety because as a MEP assigned to the Green Group, Urtasun has been a promoter of legislative and administrative initiatives with bullfighting as an objective to combat. Among them were all those that sought to deny financial aid (PAC) to agricultural farms where bullfighting cattle are raised and inhabited.
As for his opinions on bullfighting, here is a brief sample: “Bullfighting should never be considered culture”; “Bullfights are savage”; “Bullfighting is an unfair, sadistic and despicable activity.”
With such a background it is understandable that bullfighting people are angry and are on guard against what is to come. Although, as usual, they do it by wrapping themselves in flags…
When in 2011, in a long-fought demand that was presented as the panacea for all its ills, bullfighting was transferred from the Ministry of the Interior (previously, the Government) to Culture, assuming this authority in the matter, it was argued as follows: Understanding the Bullfighting as an artistic discipline and a cultural product, it is considered that the powers of the State in order to promote and protect it have their correct location in the Ministry of Culture. That year was, by the way, the last with bulls in La Monumental since the Parliament’s ban came into force on January 1, 2012 and despite the fact that, with half a million signatures through ILP, the Congress of Deputies declared bullfighting Cultural Heritage Immaterial and in 2016 the TC repealed the Catalan Law, we continue. Mention, by the way, that Urtasun was one of the promoters of the appeal against the ruling of the High Court with arguments such as: “Bullfighting can never be considered culture because it is an institutional anachronism.”
The bulls continue to be in the crosshairs of certain political formations and specifically in Sumar and those that come together in it. And Urtasun belongs to Sumar, as does Yolanda Díaz, who continues in the Government and who in the previous legislature, as Minister of Labor, was directly responsible for the denial of ERTE to bullfighting professionals in the worst months of the pandemic.
On the other hand, the Animal Welfare Law approved in March of this year and which came into force on September 29, leaves bulls out of its regulations, but in its wording it opens the door to future modifications.
Throughout the centuries, bullfighting (The most sober school of life was the title of an essay about it by the Catalan philosopher and communist Víctor Gómez Pin) has fought and overcome the attacks of political and ecclesiastical powers from the strength of its cultural roots, transmitted from generation to generation; It has been a source of inspiration for artists of all disciplines and people of all ideologies are recognized in it, so trying to patrimonialize it or demonize it from some of them is to denigrate it.
In his speech once he was promised the position, Urtasun cited Jorge Semprún, Minister of Culture with Felipe González between 1988 and 1991. Semprún lived in exile, went through the Nazi extermination camps, was a leader of the clandestine PCE and a friend of bullfighters like the Dominguín saga, in which one of them, Domingo, was a key figure in the relationship of the Party – the only one, the rest were not there or expected – with the intellectuals. Jorge Semprún explained that while living in Paris, one of his granddaughters asked him as a gift for having passed his studies to go to the Bullfighting Fair in Dax (southwestern France) and the family went there. That Semprún, so bullfighting, of which Urtasun said that in it “culture resides as an antidote to barbarism.”
Ernest Urtasun, from his new high responsibility, has to deal with the bullfighting issue with his left hand, that of truth. And, when he has doubts, in addition to Semprún, remember – among many – Lorca or Bergamín.
From Lorca that: “The bulls, the most cultured festival in the world.”
From Bergamín: “A bullfight is an immoral spectacle and, consequently, an educator of intelligence.”
As the bullfighters wish each other on the parade, good luck!
