After nearly two years of debate the regional parliament of Catalonia has passed an historic bill to ban bullfighting.
The legislation makes the region only the second independent community in Spain, after the Canary Islands, to initiate a ban on the sport.
A spokesman for Prou, the anti-bullfighting group who compiled a petition of 180,000 signatures calling for the ban, remarked, "Today has been the day we were hoping for". Leonardo Anselmi went on to say, "the suffering of animals in the Catalan bullrings has been abolished once and for all. It has created a precedent we hope will be replicated by other democratic parliaments internationally".
The ban will not come into effect until the first day of 2012, however, there are already a number of towns and cities in Catalonia, as well as other parts of Spain, that have symbolic bans in place.
The Canary Islands was the first region in Spain to ban bullfighting in 1991. The legislation banned bullfighting and any other spectacles that involved cruelty to animals.
Bullfight supporters insist that the ‘corrida' is an art form and an important tradition to preserve. They also fear that this ban could be the first of many across the country.
Before the vote, the mayor of Barcelona, Jordi Hereu said, "if the parliament bans it, it won't be because it is a symbol of a national tradition removed from Catalonia's own customs. This is all to do with the rights of animals and the treatment of animals - it is not an issue of national, or regional, identity".
