Toro de la Vega tournament

Lancing and death of the bull.

The "Toro de la Vega" is a medieval bull festival celebrated in the town of Tordesillas (province of Valladolid, Spain).[1] The tournament consists of the chase of a bull by hundreds of lancers, in which some of these will try to lance the bull to death, after it has been released through the streets of the town and led to an open field by the runners and participants.

If the bull surpasses the limits of the tournament, or the lancers are not able to kill it, it will be pardoned.[2] The festival has been celebrated yearly depending on the date of the Virgen de la Peña festivity (September 8).

In recent years, this festival has acquired increasing notoriety as a result of the protests against it,[3] which denounce the cruelty and suffering to which the bull is subjected, as well as the negative picture of the town and the whole country created by the survival of this tradition in the 21st century. In 2016, the regional government banned the killing of the bulls.[4] The festival had been previously forbidden for a period of four years during the Francoist dictatorship, after which the citizens of Tordesillas succeeded in recovering their tradition. The current prohibition is widely rejected within Tordesillas and is being contested in the country's legal system. A normal traditional encierro, in which the bull is not killed in public, is being as from 2016 which has been renamed "Toro de la Peña".

See also

References

  1. ↑ Bekoff, Marc (2009-11-25). Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare, 2nd Edition [2 volumes]: Second Edition. ABC-CLIO. pp. 98–99. ISBN 9780313352560.
  2. ↑ Douglass, Carrie B. (1999-01-01). Bulls, Bullfighting, and Spanish Identities. University of Arizona Press. pp. 44–45. ISBN 9780816516520.
  3. ↑ "Bull spearing outlawed by Spanish regional government". The Guardian. 2016-05-19. Retrieved 2016-05-20.
  4. ↑ Minder, Raphael (2016-05-19). "Killing of Bulls Is Banned at Toro de la Vega Festival in Spain". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-05-20.
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