I am traveling, with little DawnWatch time, trusting animal folks to be keeping their eyes on the news and getting those letters and comments out there to the media. But today we celebrate an event so historic I have to make sure everybody knows about it. The province of Catalonia, in Spain, which includes the city of Barcelona, has banned bullfighting. The people there have voted against bullfighting before, but yesterday, Wednesday July 28, the government passed the ban 68 to 55. It goes into effect in 2012.
While animal cruelty abounds in this world, with factory farms and animal testing laboratories providing torture akin to and generally surpassing that seen in bullrings, symbolically this is huge. The torture on farms, in slaughterhouses and in laboratories is hidden from view rather than embraced. The torture in the bullring is glorified -- it's end in Catalonia can therefore be seen as evidence of the beginnings of a societal shift with regard to what is acceptable treatment of other species.
The July 29 New York Times coverage, on page A4 by reporter Raphael Minder, takes an odd stance. The headline reads, "Looking for Wedge From Spain, Catalonia Bans Bullfighting." That wording suggests that the wedge is the motive. (The web story headline, similarly, is "Identity Debate at Heart of Spanish Bullfighting Vote.")
Minder writes that "the ban reflected less on animal rights than on a political debate over Catalan identity."
Yet later in the article he quotes Jose Ramon Mallen, a representative of Fundacion Equanimal, who says:
"This is an historic day for all those who have worked to promote animal rights in a modern society like ours. This is not about politics and Catalan identity, but about ethics and showing that it is simply wrong to enjoy watching an animal getting killed in public."
He also quotes lawmaker Josep Rull:
"This is not an attack against Spain but evidence that we, Catalans, support and share more advanced values with the rest of Europe. We can be proud to have demonstrated today that Catalonia has a more dignified and respectful society that believes in eliminating the torture and suffering of animals."
In fact only those opposed to the ban are quoted in the article as calling it "'a thermometer' to measure the state of the relationship between Catalonia and the rest of Spain." It seems surprising that the New York Times reporter, and headline, reflect that view. When animal welfare laws pass by landslides in the United States (I think now of California's Proposition 2, banning extreme confinement) we wouldn't expect the New York Times to go to the law's opponents, rather than those pushing the law, for explanations as to the motives driving the legislators or voters.
You'll find the New York Times article on line at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/europe/26bullfighting.html
The slightly odd tone of the article, while interesting, need have no effect on our use of it as a platform for the animals. It offers a great opportunity for letters to the editor celebrating this victory and hopeful that it might represent signs of a new era on its way. Please be careful when writing to the Times that you don't use any of my phrases as the paper is looking for original responses from readers. And the shorter your letters are, the more likely to get published. The New York Times takes letters at letters@nytimes.com
Time Magazine's web coverage, headed "Catalonia Bans Bullfighting, but the Fight Isn't Over" focuses more on the animal rights aspect and lets us know that, "A 2006 survey showed that 71% of Catalans were opposed to bullfighting." You'll find that article on line at
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2007038,00.html (My thanks to actorvist Alexandra Paul for that link.) You can comment right below it -- please do -- and you can send a letter to the editor at letters@time.com
Please don't limit your letters and comments to the New York Times and Time Magazine, which I just happened to focus on as they are widely available and well known throughout the world. There is a good chance your local paper has covered the ban. If so, please respond. And even if it isn't in your local paper, you can put it there, as some of the smaller papers publish close to a hundred percent of letters they receive. Why not announce this news to your community? You can tie it into a message about some of our local animal cruelty, like dogfighting, or factory farming, or tail-docking without anesthesia on dairy farms, or animal testing, or whatever you are moved to cover. You'll find the email address for a letter to the editor on your paper's website under "contact us." Or you can give your paper a call (or a ring, you Aussies and Brits) and ask for it.
Finally, just because it is relevant, I share a video that some of you may have seen a few months ago when the event covered took place -- a matador was gored through the throat during a bullfight.
I share it with a warning that the video includes images that lovers of all animals or beings, including human and bovine, will find gruesome. What I find particularly compelling about this video is that while bullfighting proponents try to present the "sport" or "art" as a challenge between man and beast, here we see the bull, despite all odds, convincingly win a round, yet he doesn't get a medal -- he gets a sword through the back administered by the matador's helpers on hand. Some competition, hey? Here's the video, replete with slow motion coverage of the goring: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KWyBr4c35M
Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn
(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts only if you do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line.)
Please go to http://tinyurl.com/254ulkx to check out Karen Dawn's book, "Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way we Treat Animals," which was chosen last year by the Washington Post as one of the "Best Books of The Year!"
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Date: Thu Jul 29 09:27:02 2010
