Bullfighting is introduced into tourism studies as the iconic example of a class of human–animal relations, involving agonistic animal contests initiated by humans. The article focuses on the most popular form of bullfighting, the corrida, at which a matador, fighting on foot (rather than mounted) kills a bull in an arena in the presence of a mixed domestic and sometimes foreign public. It discusses the polysemic perceptions of the bullfight, its exaltation by its protagonists, and growing condemnation by animal rights and welfare activists.
It argues that foreign tourism initially bolstered the expansion of bullfighting in Spain; but it is an ambivalent tourist attraction, of declining attractiveness in recent times. The article presents a comparison of bullfighting with another touristically ambivalent piercing event, the Chinese Vegetarian Festival in Thailand, and with recreational hunting, with which it shares significant commonalities. It concludes by calling for a systematic study of the range of human-induced agonistic animal contests.
Sickening slaughter, sacrificial ritual, morally obnoxious, distinctively immoral, barbaric custom of ritualized slaughter, religious ecstasy.
Pre-fight treatment: the bull has been horrendously abused for the previous two days [prior to the fight]. In fact, what spectators see is not a normal, healthy bull, but a weakened, half-blinded and mentally destroyed version, whose chance of harming its tormentor is virtually nil. (Anti-bullfighting Committee, n.d.)
Others have confirmed and expanded that criticism; thus, Sophie (2010) claims that “the odds are unfairly stacked against the bulls. Petroleum jelly is rubbed into their eyes to create blurred vision and they are shut away in the dark so as to be dazzled by the sunlight in the ring.” Some critics even insinuated that the bulls were given injections or that their legs were broken before the fight (Toti, 1963/2011).
From the very beginning of the spectacle, Spanish commentators have consistently written about bullfighting fans as though they are divided into a vast ignorant crowd that comes to the arena for cheap thrills and an elite minority of aficionados who understand what they are seeing and can make intelligent judgments [of a fight]. (p. 162)
(Bullfighting and tourism article source)
(images from Blood and Sand motion picture based on Vicente Blasco Ibanez’s novel)
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