Hundreds Protest Bullfighting’s Bloody Stain on Pamplona

For Immediate Release:

5 July 2018

Contact:

Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327, ext 222; [email protected]

HUNDREDS PROTEST BULLFIGHTING’S BLOODY STAIN ON PAMPLONA

PETA Supporters Tell Public That Torment and Killing of Bulls Must Stop Now

London – Today, more than 100 supporters of PETA and Spanish animal-protection group AnimaNaturalis marched to the beat of drums towards the Plaza Consistorial in Pamplona, Spain. Holding signs proclaiming, “Stop the Bloody Bullfights,” they staged a high-octane protest of the San Fermín festival’s hideously cruel Running of the Bulls event. The protesters – half of whom were “runners” and half of whom were “bulls” – shot blood-red flares into the sky to call for an end to the city’s yearly torment and killing of bulls.

Photos of the event are available here, here, here, and here, and video footage is available here. More photos are available upon request.

“These 100-plus protesters represent the vast majority of people around the world, whose tolerance of the archaic, murderous spectacle of bullfighting ran out long ago,” says PETA Director Elisa Allen. “It’s time that Pamplona stopped allowing terrified bulls to be speared and stabbed to death for this form of so-called ‘entertainment’ that’s nothing more than bloodlust.”

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment” – notes that more than 100 Spanish towns and cities have banned bullfighting. But in Pamplona, bulls are tormented with electric prods and sharp sticks before slipping and sliding along the narrow streets on their way to a violent death in the bullring. Once there, as many as eight men taunt, beat, and jab each bull with daggers and harpoon-like banderillas until he becomes weakened from blood loss. Then, the matador stabs the exhausted animal with a sword and an executioner cuts his spinal cord. Many bulls are paralysed but still conscious as they’re chained and dragged out of the arena.

PETA and other animal-protection groups have long been protesting against Pamplona’s annual bloodbath. At last year’s San Fermín festival, members of Vegan Strike Group were hauled away by officials after jumping into a bullring to shield a bull who lay bleeding and dying from knife wounds.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk.

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