¿The last Olé? Left-wing French MP moves to end 'immoral' bullfighting in southern France

As the bullfighting season gets into full swing across southern France, a far-left deputy intends to present a bill to the National Assembly in a bid put the final nail in the coffin of a spectacle that he deems "immoral".

Torreador Alejandro Marcos at the Féria de Nîmes bullfighting festival, southern France © Anthony Maurin

Aymeric Caron, a Parisian MP with the left-wing France Unbowed party (LFI) has confirmed that he hopes to present a bill to the French legislature to ban bullfighting which is immensely popular across the south of France.

"Bullfighting is an immoral spectacle, a spectacle that no longer has a place in the 21st century," Caron said recently.

"I think it is a point of view shared by a majority of French people," confirming that he hoped to present a bill to the French National Assembly by November to ban the practice.

France is no exception to the anti-corrida trend that has affected all the countries where bullfighting is woven into national, cultural identity – Spain, Portugal, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela.

However, since a first attempt to ban the practice in France in 2004, no initiative has succeeded in imposing a parliamentary debate in the Assembly, let alone a vote.

La semaine prochaine je déposerai une proposition de loi à l‘Assemblée nationale, soutenue par la FI et j’espère par les autres partis de la NUPEs, pour interdire la corrida en France. Il faut que cesse cette barbarie indigne de notre époque et de nous-mêmes. https://t.co/aCkIjW8PpE

— Aymeric Caron (@CaronAymericoff) July 29, 2022

Between now and November, Caron, who claims to be an "anti-speciesist" – who oppose the exploitation and consumption of animals by humans – recognises that he will first have to convince his own party and find allies in the Assembly. 

His goal is to amend the penal code, which punishes animal abuse, but underlines in its article 521-1 that its provisions "are not applicable to bullfights when an uninterrupted local tradition can be invoked."

According to Caron: "It is not a French tradition, it is a Spanish tradition that was imported into France in the middle of the 19th century to please the wife of Napoleon III, who was Andalusian."

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Preserving tradition

This "uninterrupted tradition" has nevertheless been firmly defended for decades in the south-west near the Spanish border – Bayonne, Dax, Mont-de-Marsan or Vic-Fezensac – and on the Mediterranean rim – Nîmes, Arles or Béziers. 

At the end of July in Bayonne, in the south-west of France, thousands of aficionados in red and white gathered for the first local festivals in two years - due to the pandemic - centred around bullfighting.

"Those who want to ban it don't know it. Bullfighting is a drama, we are close to death. It's almost an anachronism that it still exists because people no longer live with death. We are afraid of it, but it is part of life", says Jean-Luc Ambert, a French aficionado, who travels around France and Spain during the summer, from bullfight to bullfight.

At his side in Bayonne, his friend Françoise stresses that bullfighting is a "serious spectacle" that one "comes to see it with all the gravity that is required". 

"A man plays with his life, with respect for the animal, and the [anti-corrida lobby] don't know that," she added.

For Christian, a sixty-year-old who came from Aix-en-Provence with his friends to attend a bullfight in Bayonne:   "We must preserve traditions. I like bullfighting and I don't see why anyone would forbid me to come and see it."

pic.twitter.com/IEhtXN6SO4

— Observatoire National des Cultures Taurines (@CultureTaurine) July 30, 2022

So who's against?

According to André Viard, president of the National Observatory of Bullfighting Cultures, the banning of bullfighting is a "recurring" theme in every legislature. 

"We say to the other political groups: what is the point of associating with this political proposal which goes against cultural freedom, protected by the constitution, and the identity of the territories?

Aymeric Caron hopes to bring together, in addition to other left-wing MPs, elected members of the right-wing opposition and even the presidential majority. 

He underlines in particular the unknown position of the presidential Renaissance party whose leader in the assembly, Aurore Bergé, had called for putting an end to this "barbaric practice" in a public tribune signed by various centrist and right-wing deputies in July 2021. 

"Will she be faithful to her convictions? Or will she make a political calculation that will prevent her from supporting me?", wonders Aymeric Caron.

The cultural hot potato comes as the balance of power is wafer-thin in France's National Assembly where President Emmanuel Macron has lost the absolute majority he had enjoyed during his first five-year term in June.