PETA Offers Mayor of Pamplona a Whopping €298,000 to Cancel Cruel Running of the Bulls Forever
PETA Offers Mayor of Pamplona a Whopping €298,000 to Cancel Cruel Running of the Bulls Forever
Pamplona, Spain – The San Fermín festival – and its infamous Running of the Bulls event – has been cancelled for the second year in a row because of the pandemic. Last year, PETA offered Pamplona Mayor Enrique Maya Miranda €250,000 if he would commit to permanently ending the cruel bull runs and subsequent bullfights, in which the bulls are tormented, stabbed, and then killed violently. Now, the group has sweetened the pot, offering the original quarter of a million euros plus €48,000 more – symbolising the 48 bulls who would be spared a frightening stampede and grisly death at the festival each year. PETA has offered to place all the bulls who would have been used this year at a sanctuary, something PETA affiliates do in India with bulls who are the victims of cruelty.
“People around the world, including in Spain, say it’s past time the torment and slaughter of animals for human entertainment were stopped,” says PETA Founder Ingrid Newkirk in her appeal to the mayor. “Now is the moment to be on the right side of history. We hope you will accept our offer and allow Pamplona to reinvent itself for the enjoyment of all.”
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 declared themselves against bullfighting. But in Pamplona, at the annual San Fermín festival, terrified bulls are forced to run along narrow streets on their way to a violent death in the bullring. Once there, men stab each bull with a lance and harpoon-like banderillas until he becomes weakened from blood loss. Then, the matador stabs the exhausted animal with a sword, and if he doesn‘t die straight away, other weapons are used to cut his spinal cord.
PETA and Spanish group AnimaNaturalis have protested against Pamplona’s annual bloodbath for two decades. The city’s former mayor , Joseba Asirón, supported the protests, describing them as “fair and honest”. Speaking to reporters about the groups’ calls to remove bull runs from the festival, he said, “[T]his is a debate that sooner or later we will have to put on the table. For a very simple reason, and that is that basing the festival on the suffering of a living being, in the 21st century, is something that, at best, we have to rethink.”
PETA’s letter to the mayor of Pamplona is available here.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
Contact:
Sascha Camilli +44 (0) 20 7923 6244; [email protected]
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