Bous al Carrer (bulls in the street) is a Valencia-based company

Bous al Carrer (bulls in the street) is a Valencia-based company. | R.D.

Andrew EdePalma24/04/2021 15:01
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Bous al Carrer (bulls in the street) is a Valencia-based company. It has approached Muro town hall about staging bullfights at La Monumental, the bullring. A meeting is due to take place with the mayor of Muro, Antoni Serra, with the aim being that the company would stage what has, until recently, been the bullfight for the Sant Joan fiestas in June.

There hasn't been a bullfight for the past three years. Last year, quite obviously, there wasn't one because of the health crisis. The fiestas in Muro, as everywhere else, were called off. Prior to 2020, the reason was the legal situation, the Balearic government having done its utmost to, firstly, try and ban bullfighting and then, because the government was aware that this would be quashed by the Constitutional Court, introduce legislation to make the holding of bullfights untenable.

That legislative tactic failed because the Constitutional Court ruled that provisions of the legislation, such as outlawing the killing of bulls, represented an invasion of state powers and, expressly, the protected status given to bullfighting by the Partido Popular government of Mariano Rajoy - there was a declaration that the bullfight was in the national cultural interest.

There are now just four municipalities in Mallorca where bullfights are staged; or have been in recent years. They are Alcudia, Inca, Palma and Muro. Felanitx has a bullring, which has been abandoned for years. In Inca, there has been a recent agreement for staging the bullfight during the summer fiestas.

The town hall administration, not favourable to bullfighting, can do very little about this; it doesn't own the bullring. In Muro, the situation is different. The town hall acquired the bullring some years ago, it having stated that Muro was (and is) a bullfighting municipality.