The Toro de Lidia Foundation reprimands the Minister of Culture for his statements about bullfighting | Culture | EUROtoday

“You are the Minister of Culture of the Government of Spain, not an anti-bullfighting activist,” Victorino Martín, president of the Toros de Lidia Foundation (FTL), wrote to Ernest Urtasun, following his latest statements within the Senate. in response to a query from well-liked senator Juan Manuel Ávila. The minister said final Tuesday that “there is a majority of Spaniards with increasing sensitivity to animal rights and who do not share animal abuse.” Urtasun added that “the reality is that the PP does not have any proposals for the culture of this country, not even for bullfighting.” And proof of this, he concluded, is that the Popular Party doesn’t point out the phrase bullfighting as soon as within the final electoral program.

Despite this, Victorino Martín responds with allusions in an in depth letter through which he severely rebukes the minister for his phrases towards the bullfighting competition. Firstly, he states that “bullfighting is not culture because the law says so, but rather the law establishes the obligation to protect bullfighting precisely because it is culture.” And Martín clarifies that “the Constitution at no time says that laws declare what culture is, but rather obliges administrations to protect what culture is. And that is what happens with bullfighting.”

“History has shown,” the letter continues, “that relying on majorities to prohibit rights such as freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of religion or freedom of artistic creation (which is at the basis of bullfighting) is something typical only of totalitarian regimes.” Victorino Martín later solutions the expression 'animal torture', not utilized by the minister, who spoke of 'mistreatment'. “You cannot suggest that millions of people in the world are in favor of the supposed 'animal torture,'” he writes, “people of all types and conditions, starting with people like Jorge Semprún, for whom you have declared public admiration, and I beg you have greater consideration for all Spaniards.”

The president of the FTL makes a reference to the minister's sneakers after disfiguring him with what he considers an “unacceptable insult” when speaking about mistreatment. “I could assure you,” he factors out, “that at the moment you are reading this letter you are wearing 'animal torture' shoes, like the magnificent shoes you wore the day you attended your first Council of Ministers. According to his logic, a majority of Spaniards do not agree with his shoes. To make leather shoes like the ones she wears, a month-old calf had to be sacrificed, which must have spent that time almost always stabled. All so you can show them off.”

He then provides that bullfighting doesn’t cross the boundaries required by UNESCO – human rights and elementary freedoms – for the safety and promotion of cultural expressions, and that “promoting the end of bullfighting is a way of collaborating with censorship.” cultural”.

“Mr. Minister, your obligation is to defend, defend and promote all cultural manifestations,” the letter concludes. “Whether they like it or not, without censorship, with freedom.”