What would Hemingway make of this? The San Fermín festival in Pamplona, Spain, was the backdrop for his monumental work, The Sun Also Rises, but this week it is the setting for a major protest of which he may not have approved. The festival features a number of famed bullfighting events, none more so than the "Running of the Bulls," an event where (possibly psychotic) human beings try to outrun a pack of steers as they are guided to paddocks ahead of their turn in the ring. This year, three men—including two Americans—were gored during the first Running, but that wasn't the cause for protest.
The demonstration, organized by PETA and Spanish group AnimaNaturalis, was to object to the treatment of bulls—and it involved dozens of half-naked people adorned with bull horns:
The treatment of bulls before and during events has long been the subject of protest and outrage from animal rights groups like PETA, who often describe it as "torture." This demonstration is the culmination of a growing movement over the last few years to ban the practice in Spain.
Whether the movement will break into the legal realm remains to be seen. A Spanish court struck down a bullfighting ban enacted in Catalonia—a province of Spain featuring the city of Barcelona—by claiming the "preservation of common cultural heritage" was the state's responsibility. In an argument familiar to cultural conservatives all over the world, bullfighting's proponents claim it is an inextricable part of national heritage, a thread in the national fabric that cannot be unwoven. This week's protesters weren't much concerned with fabric of any kind.
