The PP promises to restore the National Bullfighting Award and give more legal "protection" and more economic "projection" to the bulls

The bull has no land and there is no property registrar who can delimit it. Juan Belmonte said it to Manuel Chaves Nogales to explain his revolution in the bullrings, but the sentence has exactly the same validity today to ward off the ideological battle around bullfighting. Bullfighting is neither of the right nor the left, but of the people, and, as such, the cultural heritage of Spain, but also of Portugal, France and Latin America.

The socialist Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero created the National Bullfighting Award in 2011, to reward anyone who stands out "for their work in favor of the dissemination of the cultural values ​​of bullfighting."

Thirteen years later, in 2024, the still Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, ordered the elimination of the award, because, in his opinion, "traditions evolve" and society was already moving in the opposite direction. However, the truth is that, since the prize was abolished, attendance at the main bullrings has not stopped breaking attendance records.

Now, on the verge of an electoral campaign in which Vox struggles to claim the "grounds" of the defense of bullfighting with an identity-based approach, and while Abascal's team complains that Feijóo "copies" him for going to the bullfights or for visiting Morante de la Puebla at the hotel, the PP has included in its electoral program the promise of reinstating the National Bullfighting Award.

The text of the measure, which EL MUNDO has accessed, is as follows: "We will recover respect and promotion of the expressions that best combine tradition and future, starting with the restitution of the National Bullfighting Award, and we will strengthen the presence and projection of these manifestations inside and outside Spain."

The latter is directly linked to article 46 of the Constitution, which is categorical, since it establishes that governments must not only respect bullfighting, but also have the legal obligation to promote it: "The public powers will guarantee the conservation and promote the enrichment of the historical, cultural and artistic heritage of the people of Spain and the assets that comprise it." As the Constitutional Court already ruled when declaring the ban on bullfighting in Catalonia illegal, bullfighting is legally protected as a culture and, therefore, cannot be censored.

The PP program continues like this: «We will build the future from the roots. The different folklores and each of our popular festivals and traditions are also part of the heritage and common cultural landscape of Spain. "We will guarantee their protection, we will support those who keep them alive and we will facilitate their transmission to new generations."

The suppression of the National Bullfighting Prize, in 2024, was a gesture without any abolitionist significance, in practical terms. On the contrary: it produced an enormous mobilization of the autonomous communities of the PP and the PSOE in favor of bullfighting culture, while the Senate assumed, with the help of the Toro de Lidia Foundation, the call for the award (this year, without going any further, it has been picked up by Curro Vázquez).