Bullfighting culture woos kids to boost fans
Portugal’s bullfighting tradition is on its knees, with attendance falling by nearly half in the past decade.
Now the stalwarts of the centuries-old practice are reaching out to children, hoping to turn them into future fans, to the dismay of animal rights advocates.
Blood was conspicuously absent at a recent “Bullfighting Day” at the Campo Pequeno arena in Lisbon, Portugal’s premier bullfighting venue.
It was a family affair, with children enjoying arena-shaped bouncy castles and demonstrations by apprentices of their bullfighting skills, stopping short of stabbing the animals with lances, called banderillas.
The event drew criticism from animal rights group Basta, which denounced the exposure of children to the violence of bullfighting as contravening an opinion by the UN Committee on Rights of the Child.
Pedro Antunes, 34, a bank employee who brought his five-year-old son Tiago to the event, saw things differently.
“I don’t go to a bullfight very often, but I wanted my son to see what it was like.
“As the programme didn’t include anything violent, I thought this would be a good occasion,” Antunes said.
For Paulo Pessoa de Carvalho, president of bullfighting federation ProToiro, the event was intended “to restore the tie between the bull and Portuguese culture – and increase our audience”. ProToiro wanted to create careers, he said.
The culture ministry’s General Inspection of Cultural Activities said in 2018 nearly 380,000 people attended 173 bullfights across Portugal.
Basta claims organisers inflate the figures to hide the true scale of the decline in interest, and that the drop since 2009 is no doubt more than 42%.
Campo Pequeno, a stunning neo-Moorish building dating from 1892, underwent a sixyear overhaul to become a multi-event venue, reopening in 2006 to host famous bands as well as bullfights, with an underground shopping centre, cinema and restaurants.
On “Bullfighting Day”, however, spectators occupied hardly a third of the 7,000 seats.
Children suited up in traditional matador costumes took a stab at fighting dummy bull heads mounted on two wheels before returning to the stands.
Then bulls were let in and the crowd was treated to all aspects of Portuguese bullfighting – except the bloodletting.