Yesterday was going to be a historic day in France: for the first time the National Assembly (the lower house of parliament) was ready to discuss a bill aimed at banning bullfighting and cockfighting throughout the country.
It would have been presented by Aymeric Caron, a left-wing ecological deputy, within the so-called “parliamentary niche”, the monthly day reserved for proposals from parties that are not part of the government.
Instead, the proposal was withdrawn before the debate because too many amendments had been tabled (about five hundred – an obstructionist move to sink it) and there was no time to address the issue.
In a certain sense, however, the debate was held outside the National Assembly: the country has been crossed in recent weeks by demonstrations for and against bullfighting.
The French penal code prohibits the abuse, cruelty and abandonment of animals. Bullfighting is therefore prohibited, but not on the whole national territory; it is allowed where there is “an uninterrupted local tradition”, therefore in the regions of New Aquitaine, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur and Occitania. The same goes for cockfighting, which remains legal in a couple of departments (Nord, Pas-de-Calais) and in three overseas departments and regions (Reunion, Martinique and Guadeloupe).
About two hundred bullfights and nine thousand cockfights are organized every year, for a turnover of tens of millions of dollars. The number of bulls killed annually in French bullfights fluctuates between eight hundred and one thousand.
The bill was rejected last week in committee and the government had already indicated that it would oppose it. Some parties had left freedom of conscience, probably animated – rather than by concern for the life and health of the bulls – by the desire not to antagonize a large part of the country.
On the question of bullfighting, the country is split in an almost specular way: nationally, 74% of the population is please of its banning (it was 50% just fifteen years ago); in places where bullfighting is still practiced that percentage is almost reversed: 71% he wants to keep it. Since talks about this bill began, numerous demonstrations have taken place in the “torere” cities (Nîmes, Arles, Béziers), mostly against the legislative change.
The debate on bullfights is not just about the fate of the animals that are tortured and killed in this practice, nor is it just about the three regions in which they are still organised. It has become yet another (metaphorical) arena of opposition between “the Parisian elites”, i.e. the politicians who manage the central state, and “rural France”, which believes that national politics ignores or fights against values, and the needs of those who do not live in the capital or in any case in the richest cities of the country.
The President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron is considered the symbol of these elites and their distance from the rural world. The discontent of this part of the population, which emerged in 2018 with the yellow vest protests, is the main reason why the government did not support a ban on bullfighting.
The most famous enthusiast of bullfighting was the American writer Ernest Hemingway, who among other things invited not to take the bullfights organized in France seriously. Paraphrasing the title of one of his most famous novels, the bell for the bullfight has not yet rung in the transalpine country. But after the debate over the past few weeks, the time it will ring is a tad closer.
