To the announcement from Alcudia town hall that the bullring will no longer be used for bullfights came the news that the association of horse-carriage drivers has taken a proposal to the town hall for electric carriages to replace the horse-drawn ones. This proposal mirrors one presented to Muro town hall, which was approved at this week’s council meeting. “A positive and innovative idea,“ said the mayor, Antoni Serra.
Alcudia seems almost certain to give its approval as well, and so in light of the bullring announcement, it has been a most encouraging week. The Assaib animal rights association in the Balearics congratulated the town hall for its “wise decision”, while the Baldea group for the defence of animals described the decision as the “correct” one.
Baldea also hoped that it was a “consensual position” and one that will be reflected in municipal regulations in the future, so that, “as the years go by, this type of blood spectacle cannot be held again”.
The Baldea observations are pertinent, as the decision has been taken by an administration with a particular make-up. This is clearly open to change. One suspects that it is a decision driven by the mayor, Barbara Rebassa, the rest of PSOE and the Més environment councillor, Tomas Adrover.
The other party in the administration, El Pi, may well back it as well, but it might be recalled that when Toni Mir of El Pi was the previous mayor, he was somewhat equivocal about the future of bullfighting. He at one point flatly denied being a member of the local bullfighting club, as he was receiving criticism from animal-rights groups, and insisted that any decision would not reflect his personal position but would be one for the people of Alcudia. “If they want bulls, there will be. If they don’t want bulls, there won’t be.”
Still, if one assumes that there is all-party support among the parties that comprise the administration, what about others? Well, Juan José Sendin, the one Vox councillor, responded to the news by saying that “when Vox have governing responsibility, the bulls will return to Alcudia”.
He is supportive of the Alcudia Taurina association, which has managed the bullring for the past thirty years through the concession from the town hall. Members met on Tuesday to discuss the “nonsense of stopping bullfighting”.
Mayor Rebassa said earlier this week: “That it will no longer be a bullring is something that we are clear about.” However, one political party at the town hall has made clear that it disagrees with this. There is also the fact that the Balearic government, which had originally wanted to outlaw bullfighting, was knocked back by the Constitutional Court when it passed alternative legislation to seek to make the holding of bullfights untenable. (The original bill was scrapped, when the government realised that the Constitutional Court would rule it unconstitutional.)
Good week it was. The horse carriages look as if they are on the way out. The town hall’s decision regarding bullfighting is the right one, but one doubts that we have heard the last of it.