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Home » News » World

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Spanish TV kicks bullfighting off the air

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  • A La Quinta fighting bull runs with the matador's muleta, during the second corrida of the Aste Nagusia festivities, 19 August 2007, at the Vista Alegre bullring in Bilbao, northern Spain. AFP PHOTO / RAFA RIVAS (Photo credit should read RAFA RIVAS/AFP/Getty Images)
  • Spanish matador Jose Tomas walks away after killing a bull during a bullfight in the Santa Margarita Bullring in Linares, near Jaen, 29 August 2007. AFP PHOTO/ JOS? LUIS ROCA (Photo credit should read JOSE LUIS ROCA/AFP/Getty Images)
  • Pamplona, SPAIN: French matador Sebastian Castella jumps as he fights against a Marques de Domecq fighting bull during the sixth corrida of the San Fermin festivities, 12 July 2007, in Pamplona, northern Spain. AFP PHOTO / RAFA RIVAS (Photo credit should read RAFA RIVAS/AFP/Getty Images)
  • Associated Press
Spanish bullfighter Rafael Rubio fights a Miura's bull in the bullring of Pamplona, Spain. Polls show that few Spaniards watch bullfights. Barcelona and other cities have declared themselves against the fights, but there is no nationwide movement to ban them.

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MADRID — State-run Spanish television has quietly yanked live coverage of bullfighting from its programming, ending a decades-old tradition of showcasing the national pastime out of concern that the deadly duel between matador and beast is too violent for children.

Television Espanola's first broadcast in 1948 was a bullfight in Madrid. But for the first time in the network's history, none of its channels have shown live fights this season, only taped highlights on a late-night program for aficionados.

In practical terms, the unpublicized decision by the Socialist government is largely symbolic. Of the hundreds of bullfights during the March-October season, state-run TV only tended to broadcast about a dozen. Pay TV channels and stations owned by regional governments are full of live bullfights.

Still, many in the bullfighting world — and in the conservative opposition — are livid over what they see as a slight to a cherished piece of Spanish culture.

"We think it is awful," lawmaker Juan Manuel Albendea said. He said the center-right Popular Party will press Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to restore the broadcasts.

Promoters report that 65 million people went to bullfights in Spain last year, and that pulling them off free television is unfair to older people or those who cannot afford to go to the ring or watch on cable, Mr. Albendea said.

"Bullfighting is a spectacle that is alive, and spectators have a right to see it," he said.

Television Espanola said it had nothing against bullfighting. The station noted that it aired the running of the bulls in Pamplona, in which people test their daring by racing bulls through the streets.

But the network said it had to respect a voluntary, industrywide code that, without specifically mentioning bullfighting, seeks to limit on-screen violence or "sequences that are particularly crude or brutal" from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. to protect children. Bullfights often start at 6 p.m.

Mr. Albendea called the argument nonsense, insisting parents, not the government, should decide if children can watch a matador risk a horrific goring while stabbing a snorting half-ton bull to death.

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